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The Canaries Are Dying by Clayton E. Cramer March 7, 2001 Don't just read the headlines about this kid accused of murder in Santee,
California. Read the rest of the news stories, and ask yourself if there isn't
something a bit more wrong here than just a kid with a gun. Handguns weren't
invented recently; they have been in American homes, in large numbers, for more
than a century. The Washington Post's March 6th story reports that the alleged
killer in middle-class Santee hung out at the skatepark, "Drugs were readily available to those who wanted them: marijuana,
mushrooms, acid, speed." Santee is no different from where I live, except that these sort of drugs are
available in middle school here. The Los Angeles Times distributed a news story
the same day that contained allegations that would have been shocking twenty
years ago: "a break-up last week with his 12-year old girlfriend. There were
allegations that Williams tried to entice the girl into having sex while she
was intoxicated." Raising kids in Sonoma County, I don't even find such allegations surprising;
that's actually pretty common behavior around here for kids that age. A culture based on bullying, mocking, violence, degradation, and intoxication
has taken over America. The entertainment business-- the purveyors of
"poison gas"--keep insisting that the problem isn't violent movies,
violent video games, degrading television shows, divorced parents, parents too
busy to supervise their kids, or songs (and presidents) that encourage teenaged
boys to see girls only as objects of sexual gratification. No, they insist that
the problem is guns; ignore the dead canaries filling up the bottom of the cage.
But the guns have been around for a very long time in America--and yet these
random mass murders by schoolkids have not. We have received our warning; will
we have the courage to repudiate the culture of violence and depravity? Clayton E. Cramer is a software engineer in Northern California. [email protected],
http://www.ggnra.org/cramer to see
excerpts from my five published books and full text of a number of scholarly and
popular articles. Related
Reading Santana Tragedy Insights Columbine Tragedy Insights Children & Guns Guns & Schools |
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