Gun Not to Blame in School Shootingsby Jennifer Freeman
The recent shooting massacre at Red Lake High School represents a horrific event that could happen at any school in the United States. Every day we hear additional news stories about children or teenagers who bring firearms to school. In most cases, the firearms are confiscated without incident. This provides little comfort, however, as the very idea of a child having access to a loaded firearm and smuggling it into school without their parents' knowledge is more of a risk than any of us would like to take with our childrens' lives.
When a shooting does occur at school, you can count on the media to lend a helping-hand to their anti-gun buddies in congress by isolating the gun as the cause of the crime. The media wants you to view the blood, suffering, and loss and come to the conclusion that the crime never would have occured if the child did not have a gun.
What the media blatantly fails to recognize, however, is that teenagers used to bring guns to school on a regular basis at a time when school shootings did not exist.
Firearms were stored at school by students who planned after-school hunting and target shooting activities. The ROTC also used real firearms with live ammunition for decades before they were banned in schools.
This occurred at a time when children obeyed their parents and teachers and respected each other. This type of respect for others and joy of life was displayed in many facets of our culture including books, movies, and music. Children were readily discplined in an effort to raise them to be responsible adults. Americans in general were proud of their country and anxious to contribute their best.
Despite the important landmark advances in civil rights and freedom of expression, social values in the United States have changed dramatically since the drug and sex revolution of the 1960's. Many aspects of our culture glorifies and encourages personal behavior that often results in feelings of isolation, detachment, and loss of self-respect.
Today, many of America's children are being raised in a culture without any life-affirming, discplined values to balance out external factors. Parents and teachers are failing to hold children responsible for their actions leaving them without role models and without expectations of behavior. Many adults relinquish control of their children with disastrous results. In many cases, kids with behavioral problems are being prescribed mood-altering drugs as a means to control behavior without exercising discpline. Very little is being discussed about the violent side-effects of these drugs.
Blaming inanimate objects is yet another display of failure to accept responsibility. There is no telling how many young people are graduating from high school with serious mental issues that will only be further exacerbated once they enter college or the work force. It is imperative that we, as a society, make a concerted effort to identify the root of this problem. This will be difficult to achieve since the very institutions who want to take away our guns contribute greatly to the fragmentation of our society, lack of common culture, and intolerance for life-affirming expressions or behaviors.
It is worth noting here that Israel, a country targeted by terrorists on a daily basis, has not had a school shooting since 1974. They eliminated their vulnerability to attack by arming and training teachers and administrators in firearm use. And while this may seem like a shocking suggestion to American teachers, there is no telling how many lives and injuries could have been prevented if the school's administration had taken a more proactive role in providing for the defense of the children.
http://www.libertybelles.org/articles/school_shootings.htm.
