Regarding Children who kill...

• Messages sorted by:[ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]

Puppy23851@aol.com wrote:

Laura> I was raised by a single mother (unsaved) and believe me,
Laura> if my brother or I had howitzer shells at the foot of the
Laura> bed, or pipe bombs in the attic, there would have been some
Laura> intetesting conseqences. How does a parent not react...

Yeah, no kidding :-/   My brother and I taped a couple dozen bottle
rockets together once and our mom caught us with it just before
launch.  We got chewed out big time and all our fireworks were
confiscated.

But then again, my college roomates were all a bunch of psychotic gun
nuts.  We probably had enough firepower in our apartment to overrun a
small third-world nation.  Mike is now a high school history teacher,
Dale is an auditor for the EPA, Troy is a Ft Worth police officer, and
I write computer programs.

Anneliese wrote:

AC> Recently, there has been a disturbing trend among children and teenagers to
AC> act out against authority with deadly force.  I don't think I need to
AC> rehash the details.

The violence as reported by the media is indeed disturbing and
troubling.  But consider this: our view of the world is through the
filter of the media.

Some quotes from http://www.junkscience.com/news2/glassman.htm:

 The United States has 38 million children between the ages of 10 and
 17 and 20,000 secondary schools. In 1994, there were no school
 shootings in which more than one person was killed; last year, there
 were four; this year, two.  In 1995 (the latest statistics), 319 kids
 aged 10 to 14 were murdered; the homicide rate for seniors aged 70 to
 74 is 50 percent higher.

 U.S. News noted that "juvenile murder arrests declined . . . 14
 percent from 1994 to 1995 and another 14 percent from 1995 to 1996."

 [The media turns] individual incidents in small towns in Oregon into
 national crises.
 
 Why? Well, one answer may be a crime shortage. At a Harvard symposium
 recently, one panelist pointed out that local TV news shows have to
 import violent footage now that local criminals aren't turning out
 enough products (there were only 43 murders in Boston last year, the
 fewest since 1961).

 Another reason is a news shortage. In an era of peace and prosperity,
 the press finds little to excite the imagination -- and prey on the
 fears -- of its audience.

[end excerpts]

More evidence of a drop in violent crime: I stopped in P.G. County in
Maryland last week, and I didn't get mugged!  :-)

Richard Masoner
Champaign Illinois USA