In years past, in the Midwest where I came from, you could drive through high school parking lots and see students’ pickups with gun racks in the rear window on which rested shotguns, long rifles and fishing poles. They were an accepted part of growing up but you never heard of school shootings.
What’s changed? The cultural environment has changed. Now kids are taught from a young age to kill and destroy “enemies” via games on the internet. In the process they become immune to death and dying.
At the same time, adults on both sides of the political spectrum are hurling vitriol at one another about how terrible is the champion of the other. Children hear this and their young minds are like blotters soaking up this vitriol.
What are we to do, throw out the Second Amendment? And what then, leave the protection of our safety to a thin blue line that folks like Black Lives Matter, the Black Panthers, Antifa, and whatever emerging culture of hatred is waiting to prey on us? How many more amendments will follow? We live in a world of hatred, fear and greed that did not exist when you and I played cowboys and Indians and listened to Hopalong Cassidy.
We’ve created this world with our slow devolution into acceptance of a philosophy of “it’s my way or the highway.” We’ve elected politicians whose only desire was to use their office for political gain and screw everyone else. As a result, our chickens truly are coming home to roost and our school children are dying.
There is a solution to this nightmare but as long as we keep throwing stones at one another, it will never be found.
Francis X. “Frank” Barden
Arlington
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