Guns, massacres and more! my solutions
The whole gun/shootings/crime/kids is a topic that is linked to each other. It is obvious to anyone that there is something desperately wrong with western society today, and not just American, all over the western world kids are misbehaving and playing up to sometimes dangerous levels, and people always ask why? Take for example columbine and more recently Virginia tech, why do people do this, why? I am going to use what I know and what I’ve experienced growing up in this culture to try and answer that the best I can, what I am about to say are conclusion based on facts and my own opinion.
Who is not to blame?
guns
Well as much as I am anti-gun it pains me to say its not the fault of guns, guns are an object, they have to be put In the hands of humans to become a deadly weapon and people are responsible for their actions. You only have to look at Canada to see that having guns do not cause gun crime. Now of course they help, but they are not worthy of blame.
media
Next one is the media; does violence in our society make us violent? No it does not. The reason again is simple; most media violence is fantasy, its staged. Not actually happening. Computer games while some of them are based on real advents (WW2) they are cartoon style drawings of the battles. And as long as someone is mentally stable enough to separate violence from reality then no amount of violence is going to make them violence, the only exception is very young children (under 9’s) the reason is because young children learn from imitation, and if they see a particular behaviour over and over again they imitate it, that’s why if mum swears, child swears, if dad yell at mum, child yells at mum/everyone. Because they think that’s acceptable. By the time the child is in his/her preteen years (9+) he/she should have a sense of what’s acceptable and what’s not, was real and what isn’t. This in its self is not a problem as a solution has been around for decades. Age ratings! These simple little things stop the wrong material getting into kids hands and all it takes is to stop shops selling it to young kids and make parents more aware to solve the whole problem. I know some people argue that letting teenagers play computer games make them violent but that’s not true, take myself. I play call of duty 2, a violent world war 2 computer game, if you hit someone in the head it’s a one shot kill, so I always try to aim at the head, I’ve been playing games like this for 5 years, and similar games like it.
An example if the “violence” in the game I killed 13 people with a rifle in the space of 20 minutes
Has this affected me? Yes it has. I went to an army demo, on one of the stalls where some captured weapons, ak-47 etc. now I went up to the ak-47, unloaded it, emptied the barrel, loaded the magazine back in and cocked it ready for firing in reasonable quick time without even checking the gun over to see how to do it, I knew how to do it, I knew the magazine realise button was behind the magazine. I knew all of this and I learnt it all from computer games. The army guy was quite shocked and I asked if I was the original owner “ROFL”. Does this make me a dangerous person? No it doesn’t because why I know how to use one I would not do it, I have been exposed to all this violence but I still would never go around killing people unjustly because I know killing is wrong. And no amount of it is going to change that, and it’s the same with almost everyone, so you can not blame violence in our media, its always been their since the dawn of time man has glorified war, and he continues to do it.
Me with said ak-47
who is to blame then?
bullying
look at columbine, according to wikiand I quote. The important part of that is the bullying. Can bullying make you into a killer? The truth is yes. Allow me to tell you about my own past which is highly sensitive and it still troubles me today. I was bullied for about 9 years at school, from the day I started till about year/grade 9/10. And it was constant. The reason? Well I never really knew, I was different I guess from most kids, I had Asperger’s syndromea little bit of attention deficit disorder ADHD. The bullying itself started off minor, name calling, small fighting, it was difficult to deal with and I often came home and cried myself to sleep due to my age and the fact I didn’t understand why. My parents tried their best to protect me but the teachers also didn’t like me so it was allowed to continue unchecked. In middle school it reached its climax, I was attacked on the bus and I was stabbed in the leg with a screwdriver. That very night I tried to commit suicide, I tried to drown myself in the bath but I couldn’t do it. After I failed to do that I started to punch myself repeatedly and cry because I was such a failer, I couldn’t even kill myself I guess when they called me a loser who couldn’t do anything they where right! I was also a few weeks later thrown into a skip full of concrete and metal.“According to early accounts of the shooting, Harris and Klebold were unpopular outsiders and frequent targets of bullying at their high school”
Now I would of, at that time given anything to kill them, you know that feeling you get when you just know “I could kill them if I really wanted to” the feeling you get when you know your soul tells you “you wont regret this” I had that. Now like I said, I was young at the time and this was the peak of the bullying, I guess the one good thing about being bullied by older children is they finish school before you do. Once the left, the hate went away, and I learned to socialise again. But this is my point while they where bulling me I would of killed because I was so angry, I mean I tried to kill myself, why not other people? And no one would socialise with me out of fear of being a target himself or herself. And this wasn’t particularly bad bullying, what I suffered is pretty average of most victims. But what if it didn’t stop, what if it continued to a more “capable of killing” age? What if it was worse, what if I actually had access to weapons to do it? Would I? After all during the bullying I wanted nothing more for them to die, I even tried to kill myself, what care would I show anyone else if I didn’t show myself? Bullying is a real cause for this sort of “snapping” behaviour; it can cause normal kids to snap, its one of the soul reasons for columbine and many other school shootings and I wouldn’t at all be surprised if this new guy was bullied at some point in his life.
Family
What is the one thing that affects us all? More then any game, movie or gun law? Family! In today’s society we do not value what effect family has on us in older life. And at no other point in history has family been so undervalued and undermined, this is everyone’s fault, extreme feminism, and deadbeat dads. Everyone is responsible. Do I mean children who grow up in single parent homes? No! That couldn’t be more far from the truth, I mean the boys who grow up with out a male role model in their life. You can be in a single parent household but as long as you see your dad now and again or have some male role model in your life (step dad, uncle etc) you grow up fine.
Does the lack of a father really effect boys that much? Well let’s look shall we! According to the metroand the evidence for this? Well lets look at schools from the IndependantThe biggest percentage of lone-parent households is among black ethnic groups. Forty-eight per cent of black Caribbean families have one parent. Children who grow up without their biological father are more likely to be unemployed, commit crime and leave education early, according to research by think tank Civitas.interesting no? If you also look at those sources you will see that the Chinese perform best in school and have some of the lowest single parenting rates around. Look at operation trident, a whole police campaign targeting young black males because they are more prone to run around with guns. Boys need fathers, and today in some ethnic groups 40% of them don’t have one, and its harming them, boys need male role models in order to grow up knowing how a man is meant to be, someone for them to respect and someone to kick their butt when they step out of line! Because without fathers who are these young black males turning to as their role models, the closest thing they have to a father, famous blank men, and almost all present day famous black males with the exception of movie stars are rappers who promote guns, drugs and death, and that’s why you have many young black people running around with guns, its not the rappers themselves, its the fact these boys have got no other male influence in their life. And its not just black boys, boys of all races are in a similar situation, though on a smaller scale it tends to be. But its not just that, it goes deeper, kids need their family they need adults they can talk to and trust, this is another problem we have, kids and parents are not forming the correct bonds with their children, they stick them in front of the TV from the moment they get back from school till bed time, families don’t meals together but in front of the TV, is this the TV’s fault? No its an object it doesn’t make you watch it, you do it yourself. This causes alienation of children, and when that happens kids turn to other sources, friends, religious extremist and any particular media they feel “talks directly” to them such as rappers for example. Parents are role models for their kids, they are their guiding light and kids need to able to talk to them in order to get best use of their experience and wisdom. Of course we are only talking about a small number of families, most kids grow up with a strong male role model, and have good relationship with their parents but the numbers that don’t are increasing and it only takes one for a massacre.But the biggest gender gap is between black Afro-Caribbean boys and girls - sparking concerns about the performance of black boys in schools. Fewer than one in four Afro-Caribbean boys (22.7 per cent) achieve five top-grade GCSE passes compared with 36 per cent of boys overall.
Discipline
Like I said earlier about the effect of media violence and knowing right from wrong. Kids need discipline to learn right from wrong, your not born with morals they have to be taught to you, threw discipline and religion (in some cases). The problem we have today is that parents and child experts cannot even agree how to raise children! You only have to look at the “to spank or not to spank” argument to see that. It doesn’t matter how you discipline your kids though as long as they get some! It’s not the kids who are grounded or spanked who grow up with problems, its those that are not disciplined at all.
Culture
Like I said, guns don’t kill people, people do! But it’s our attitudes towards them that make us pick them as something to sort out problems out with. This is where Canada and the USA differ; one culture tends to glorify guns more then the other. Guns need to be treated with more respect and not be glorified, the NRA says education is the answer, its not! Kids know their dangerous, that’s why they use them, it’s the attitude towards them as some sort of casual fashion accessory that needs to change
What can we do?
Short Term
+ Better mental health care for children, even if they go threw a lot of negative stuff you can still help them and steer them in the right way.
+ Harsh punishments for bullying, we don’t do enough to stop bullying in school, their really needs to be a war on bullying if you like with real punishments for bulling, no one deserves it.
+ Better rights for fathers, we need to stop the extreme wings of feminism telling us their harmful lies, dads need better rights
Long term
+ attitude towards parenting, we need to recognise it takes two to bring a child up, we also need to start talking to our children again and start establishing bonds with our kids again. Like I said it’s only the minority of parents like this but its harming everyone. We need to give children people they can talk to in confidence and get help and love from.
+ attitude towards guns needs to be changed, less glory more responsibility, but that’s going to be the hardest one to change, but until it does their will be more massacres, as long as kids see it as a means to fix their problems.
All of the short term stuff can be legislated pretty effectively, however some the long term stuff will require a change in culture, and that my friends take decades.
Just my 2 cents on “life” these days.
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Originally Posted by MasterAdnin
