Archive through July 16, 2006

[josephb-7618]

I have a question concerning the gun violence issue that we have been seeing in our schools that I believe needs to be addressed. . are the number of violent shootings increasing ? . these children were bringing kitchen knives to school instead of guns and using them to stab and kill their fellow classmates would there be a national outrage to eliminate kitchen knives? The answer that most inteligent people would give to this question is NO WE ARE NOT GOING TO ELIMINATE KITCHEN KNIVES. We need to understand why the problem is happening and what we can do as parents and members of our community to solve the problem. . long will it take our society to understand that if you continue to expose some portion of the grade school children and high school teenagers to graffically violent movies, music and interactive video games where the point is to kill and toture people that there will be a major influence on our children. If in additional to this some of these children are abused by their parents or other people it increase the violent reactions we are seeing. If parents keep allowing children to BUY THIS GARBAGE and abusing children we should not be surprised at the results we are seeing. The solution to the problem is not to apply a band-aid it's parents getting involved with the schools to solve the problem. . the gun problem is really that children now have easy access to guns then why didn't rural children in the 60s, 70s and 80s that we allowed to have their own guns go to school and shoot their clase mates ? I believe the answer to this question is that these children understood that a gun is a weapon that is never pointed at anything you don't intend to put a large hole in. They also were taught respect for life and understood that the gun had the fire power to end a life. I know these were the lessons taught to me by my father. . think our society should stop looking for simple short term solutions to complex problems. Metal detectors in schools are not the solution to this problem. Teaching our children to respect others and how to resolve problems is the solution. I don't think children should spend 2 hours or more per day with killing simulators / violent video games and violent movies as a solution to the current school violence problem. I think violence that children are exposed to is the problem. Are we willing to take the first step and get involved or do we still believe that if we could just eliminate all those evil guns the problem would go away?

[delia43-3913]

Let me ask one question: How does anyone who is for more gun control expect to protect their family from an ARMED intruder if they sre are not allowed to own a weapon of their CHOICE? I thought the whole idea of starting the United States was so that people could have a CHOICE, a choice of religion, a choice of free speech, and most importantly... a choice of whether or not they want protection from someone who might harm them. Of you take guns out of the hands of decent American citizens, you put them in the hands of people who allready disregard laws. Although I do not think that guns should be made available to people who dont know how to use them, I advocate responsible gun ownership in the form of training, but it should not be mandatory. When will people wake up and see if the govt and criminals are the only ones with weapons we will lose not only personal safety, but our right to live as free citizens of a country we created for the direct purpose of having freedoms denied to us elsewhere.

[annika1-952]

Hi America.We, two girls from Germany know, whats going on in your country.We think the laws must be stronger.Otherwise your problems with violence will go on and on.Safe your pupils.That would never happen in Germany, because we have no guns at school.Bye Bye.

[almita-559]

i think america should become more stricly serious when handling cases involving guns. i think whoever killed with a gun should be kill the same way too. we should not be tolerating this anymore because we already had to deal with it Columbine High School and we still not learning. everyone want to do the same thing..all capy cats also should be punish as an audult not as to who they are either if they are under age. . their intention was to kill or harm someone they are not thinking as a kid or as a child but as an adult. . stop talking about illness conditions . one will be kill another person when you feel sick or because deppreseed why not kill yurself frist thatn that willbe deprression

[linda-8893]

the court system should pass new laws because this society now says is getting from bad to worse everyday. every day we get cases involving guns ..enough is enough. Why we do not hear this things as much as we here this happening in this country? is it because we have to much freedom? or to much laws that are to be given to our children? how come those oriental countries give their childrens a different orientation thatn we do here...enough . we do not do something now there will be another massacre somtime along ..