|
"Teaching
Kids To Kill"
Unlearning
Violence
On
the night of the Jonesboro shootings, clergy and counselors
were working in small groups in the hospital waiting room,
comforting the groups of relatives and friends of the 15
shooting victims. Then they noticed one woman who had been
sitting alone.
A counselor went up to the woman and discovered that she
was the mother of one of the girls who had been killed.
She had no friends, no husband, no family with her as she
sat in the hospital, alone. "I just came to find out how
to get my little girl's body back," she said. But the body
had been taken to the state capital, for an autopsy. Told
this, she said, "I just don't know how we're going to pay
for the funeral. I don't know how we can afford it."
That
little girl was all she had in all the world, and all she
wanted to do was wrap her little girl’s body in a blanket
and take her home. Some people’s solution to the problem
of media violence is, “If you don’t like it, just turn it
off.” If that is your only solution to this problem,
then come to Jonesboro, and tell her how this would have
kept her little girl safe.
All of us can keep our kids safe from this toxic, addictive
substance, and it won’t be enough if the neighbors are not
doing the same. Perhaps the time has come to consider regulating
what the violence industry is selling to kids, controlling
the sale of visual violent imagery to children, while still
permitting free access to adults, just as we do with
guns, pornography, alcohol, tobacco, sex and cars.
|
|
|
|
Read
a different article:
|
Encyclopedia
of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, Volume 3, p.159
©
1999 by Academic Press. All rights of reproduction in any
form reserved.
|
