"Johnny Holiday/John A. Taube" wrote:
Corpus Cristi Caller-Times
Saturday, March 25, 2000
Martin P. Welch, Baltimore Circuit Court Judge, Family Division
ARMED, ALIENATED AND MEANWhat can society do about juvenile predators?
Last year's rampage at Columbine High School, the United States' worst schoolhouse shooting spree, left America numb and hoping such senseless killings would end. They haven't.
Recently, a 6-year-old Michigan boy took a handgun to school and killed a classmate; a 7-year-old Alabama boy fatally shot a 5-year-old neighbor with an air gun loaded with pellets or BB shot; a man shot and killed three victims near Pittsburgh in an apparent hate crime; a Memphis, Tenn., gunman reportedly killed four people at a fire scene; and in Baltimore County, a mentally disturbed man allegedly shot and killed four people. Unless we begin to take action, this senseless gun violence will never end.
I've spent six years hearing juvenile cases as a judge in Baltimore. I hear 500 to 600 cases a year, ranging from car theft to murder. Day in, day out, I sit on the bench hearing about the worst that our society has to bear, unspeakable acts committed by our children, and the abuse and neglect of our children.
I'm troubled by every act of senseless violence, but I'm particularly concerned by crimes committed by juveniles.
What does it say about us when our children kill?
I've concluded that we need a national policy addressing youth violence and juvenile predators. The president should use his office as a bully pulpit to lead us to a solution to this growing cancer. Congress and federal officials should work with local governments and child advocates to develop legislation, policies and programs that will help us reach our at risk children.
If we really believe that children are our future, then youth violence should be taken no less seriously than some of the other problems that have threatened our nation. Great leadership took the country through the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War 11 and other calamities. With more of our children showing so little regard for their lives and the lives of others, youth violence should be the first threat we conquer in the 21st century.
But the president, the Congress and state and local governments cannot wage this battle alone. They cannot guarantee that our children are safe in our schools. Parental involvement and a return to core values are the keys. All too often, I have encountered juveniles who do not understand the sanctity of life. They have no empathy for others. They do not have parents or positive role models who teach them to be productive members of society.
Children, especially middle and high school students, can be brutally cruel to classmates who appear to be different. Tolerance is another core value that these children lack. Tolerance must be a condition of living in a free and civilized society. It comes from home training and/or religious training. In cases where children are not taught tolerance at home or through the faith community, then it should be taught in the schools. But our schools are overburdened and understaffed, and they cannot teach the core values that many parents fail to instill in their children. This must change.
Another part of the solution is a responsible entertainment industry. Certain segments of the entertainment industry have a stranglehold on the minds and lives of our children. That death grip equates with astronomical corporate profits. Today's popular culture, including commercial and cable TV, films, professional wrestling, violent video games, "gangsta" rap and heavy metal music, desensitize our children toward violence, sex and drug use.
Even in the presence of normal parental controls, our children carelessly drink from an intoxicating daily dose of violence and sex presented by the entertainment industry. The corporate conglomerates that profit from the production and distribution of this trash should bear responsibility for the carnage it produces.
The entertainment industry's responsibility for youth violence is no different from the liability the tobacco industry incurs for its deadly products. We should be pushing the entertainment industry to promote the core values that benefit our youth instead of hawking ideas that promote antisocial behavior and violence.
The last part of the needed solution is an epiphany within the gun industry and the gun lobby. The federal government requires the pharmaceutical industry to place child safety caps on aspirin bottles, while it has failed to mandate that gun manufacturers place a similarly simple safeguard on an instrument that has one purpose - to kill.
It is unlikely that any of the school killings would have occurred without firearms. These weapons make killing too easy and impersonal. They wind up in the hands of children because we lack effective gun control laws. The gun industry and its supporters should recognize the problem and stop hiding behind a distorted view of the Second Amendment.
While the entertainment industry, the gun industry and our political leaders should bear some of the blame for juvenile violence, parents deserve the bulk of the blame. Parents should scrutinize the types of films and television shows to which their children are exposed. They should make sure their children do not have unrestricted access to guns.
Parents should also be involved with their children, know their friends, know their music and what is in their bedrooms and even in their school lockers.
It is crucial that parents do their part. Six months from now, when some new domestic or international crisis snatches our short attention spans, we should not forget that the risk of gun violence is real and happens much too often in our schools.
We as parents need to make sure that when little Johnny goes to school, he will learn, develop, thrive and, most of all, return home safely. We must do all in our power to make sure that little Johnny is not sprawled out on the school house floor awaiting removal by the coroner.
COMMENTS
The author of this article brings up too many points worthy of comment for a short piece. While the author finds parents to be the major reason for children�s anti-social behavior, my comments will focus on one of his statements: �entertainment industry has a stranglehold on the minds and lives of our children.� Mostly he is referring to television; it has narcotic effects, especially on underdeveloped minds. Part of Random House Dictionary�s definition of narcotic: 1. any of a class of substances that blunt the senses, as opium, morphine, belladonna, and alcohol, that in large quantities produce euphoria, stupor, or coma, that when used constantly can cause habituation or addiction, and that are used in medicine to relieve pain, cause sedation, and induce sleep 2. anything that exercises a soothing or numbing effect or influence.
Television is a narcotic for many people. In that television reaches the audio and visual receptors, its sedative effect is very pronounced. Television repetition of behaviors that run contrary to accepted social conduct knows no bounds. It�s repeated over and over. In that this is enhanced by these two receptors in a manner that makes the recipient feel that these activities are socially acceptable, makes television the monster it is. It grabs hold of children as young as three and starts them on a hard to change concept of how one leads a fulfilling, useful life.
There are lengthy articles on television�s narcotic, mesmerizing effects on children; so this piece will leave it up to readers, on their own, to get more information on this subject.
Television producers cite the First Amendment for a justification of the abhorrence their media dwell on. When children engage in dreadful acts of violence because of the many hours they are �glued� to television, televison producers find ways to ignore these consequences and continue citing the First Amendment.
Should television producers be consider horrible people? Absolutely not! They are merely merchants and follow the unwritten rules of all merchants in our merchandising, socioeconomic structure, our �Price System.� All merchants (let�s not wax on exceptions) are lead by the �holy grail� of merchandising: One can not make too much profits. One must constantly get more and more money.
Two Questions: 1. How long have merchants been around? 2. How can society operate without merchants.
Question 1. Merchants came with the adoption of our Price System and this system saw its beginning almost at the start of civilization. When Homo sapiens changes from hunters and gatherers to cultivating the fields and domesticating animals and began trade and commerce, exchanging goods and services on a commodity valuation, merchants made their appearance. Their dedication to profits/money has not changed since primitive times.
Question 2. In that I�m 87 and have been a student of societal problems for time that seems to be forever, I have found one and only one way merchants can be eliminated. We must junk our current system, our Price System, and come up with a system in which there are no merchants. It cannot be over emphasized that the new system must take into account that we live in a scientific-technological age � the only one ever known � and it must be designed to fit the requirement of modern times, our age.
Technocracy has laid out such a system and calls it the Technological Social Design. Every individual who is aware that our economic/social problems are monumental is advised to study Technocracy�s concepts! Mind you � merchants submitting to the drive of the holy grail is only one of our mammoth problems. Yes, it will take a study on your part; there�s no short cuts. As good a place to start a study is to log onto Technocracy�s official web site <www.technocracy.org> and review the various articles on this site. Especially read M. King Hubbert�s article �Man-Hours and Distribution. Also, the unofficial Technocracy web site <www.technocracysf.org> has solid Technocracy material. On this site, a �must� to read is �A Commentary to Jim Lehrer.�
