No

by Adam Mcculley

Created on: April 29, 2008

In order to understand the "wave " of campus shootings, and it's possible precursors, we must first try to grasp a few important facts....this means a bit of number crunching, a bit of comparison, and a steady tracking of said phenomena over an extensively traceable period of time.Sooooo..we'll put the bravado and commentary on hold, roll up our sleeves and jump in.

I am currently a proud citizen of the beautiful state of Virginia. According to the VA state law-enforcement database, in 1993 the incidents of violent offenses in schools was about 13 per thousand children. That was 15 years ago. A good place to build a statistical arc of youth violence. But hold on, this arc is more of a steady diagonal line, going down,down,down, as incidents of violence have decreased in a stable, predicable fashion, since our starting point. In late 2007 the number sat at 4 incidents of violence per thousand students. (RE: VAsafeyouth.org). I am also a gamer, and avid movie-goer,Particularly horror flicks. The bloodier, the better. I need not tell you, dear readers, what you already know. Hollywood and Silicon-Valley up the ante almost weekly, nay, daily in the shock, violence, and bloodshed department. Since 1993, our statistical highpoint, video game and cinema technology has exploded exponentially. The reigning tech-wizards that produce such entertainment have entered realms of depravity today, that can't even compare to super NES of 1993. Yet youth crime has steadily DECREASED by over 50%. I bet if all denizens of other states do some checking, you will find the same trends. I did. I checked Massachusetts, California, and Texas, as well as my own home state. All show a steady decrease in youth violence in the past 15 years. So how can we reconcile these two facts? Youth violence is going down, the entertainment industry is pouring it on like never before. Maybe we can't reconcile these facts because their is no logical connection.Maybe video games and movies don't factor in to such an equation. VA tech was a horrible thing. 6 people died. A big chunk of America is scared and confused. They want answers. Should we give them easily digestible ideas, in the form of sound-bytes, and slogans, instead of those dry, not-so-sensational numbers that tell the true story? Will we find a safe intangible to beat up on...yet again? I think this happens because of pride and pettiness. I think kids keep shooting up the schoolyards (In decreasing numbers) because we; The all knowing grown-ups are failing them. What's worse, we can't even own up to that. We'd rather blame DOOM, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or Marylin Manson, than the community, the family, or the school that raised and ignored the Kip Kinkle's, Luke Woodham's, and Eric Harris's. It's time to get real folks....our babies lives may depend on it. We, as a society need to be accountable for these tragedies, not inanimate objects, or cultural abstracts. We are getting a handle on youth violence, the facts don't lie. But it won't completely go away until we re-think the way we raise and socialize our children. How many parents have children that are violently bullied on an almost daily basis? What do we do about it? Throw up our shoulders and say "boys will be boys"? I guess they will, until they pick up a gun and lash out....right? Then we'll stand around and say "How could this have happened?" How are the "bad" kids treated by their school, their community? Are they looked upon as children in crisis, who may need some extra guidance, or are they marginalized as defectives, not worth the faculty's time. After all,those all-American, super-popular kids are easier to understand right? They ARE going somewhere in life so maybe it's better to focus our efforts on helping already successful kids be even more successful. Wow...that doesn't make sense. But that's what we do. It seems we don't notice those kids that are hurting, or lost until the killing starts.After it's over we blame plastic and celluloid for the loss of our beautiful, perfect kids. We ignore those kids in the shadows. We devalue them to nothing. When they lash out, we act surprised. We are surprised when they don't play their assigned role of sub-par citizen. Maybe, just maybe , if we truly tried to listen to ALL of our kids, not just the pretty, popular ones, or the ones with straight A's, we'd hear those lost boys and girls crying for help. Maybe then, we could prevent these massacres.Video games, movies and music just might be a creative, constructive outlet for natural teen aggression. They might even be a factor in the steady DECREASE of youth crime. We don't know yet. Only time will tell. What we do know is this:Every time we try to solve this problem by blaming ITEMS and ignoring PEOPLE, we fail. We will keep failing until we can be brave enough to admit our own failures, and change our behaviors. It truly does take a village to raise a child. When a child goes wayward, try to help and understand. We need to recognize the warning signs, and act. And we need to act with compassion. After all, these are our kids. Behind the black clothes, thug attitude, and loud music, is a child. No more, no less. We need to give our kids the tools they need to make good decisions, and stop playing games with the facts. It's hurting them more than us.

So that's that. A little bit of statistical boredom, a little bit of impassioned soap-box grandstanding, and hey, we might get to the bottom of this after all.It's simple, don't lie. If we treat people right....(ALL people, not just the pretty, or handsome and popular ones. This is what we struggle with, day in and day out: Maintaining our standards of decency in the face of change.We truly treat people differently, based on some pretty old, out-dated,and sometimes just plain asinine criteria)...maybe things might work out. But if we continue to point the finger at objects that have no direct link to said child, as a possible cause of said child's deviant behavior, we are bending logic to fit a pre-established theory. That theory seems to release us adults from responsibility, and thats appealing. But it's not very honest. We Should search for answers within ourselves, within our communities. We shouldn't Constantly crane our necks west, and blame the Hollywood/Silicon-Valley crowd. They sell us fantasy. WE are accountable for our reality.

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