Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/116174
responsible members of society, we make excuses for them. And ourselves. We no longer teach responsibility so much as encourage entitlement. And we let the entertainment industry do the parenting. Movies, TV, rock/rap music stars, sports thugs, the Internet and other kids are raising our kids. You don't need to know that the #1 movie a month after the Sandy Hook shooting was Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D to grasp the essential reality here: we are desensitizing, brainwashing and training our kids via violent films and compute games. They train to kill and win by killing en masse. The more blood and gore the better. The higher the body count, the better. I, for one, am sick of Hollywood hypocrites who glamorize violence, sadism, brutality and the misuse of firearms and then climb on their soapboxes to denounce guns. I don't believe in muzzling free speech, but perhaps it's time we held Hollywood responsible for profiting from films and video games that inspire, teach and S celebrate wicked barbarity. Perhaps we should stop celebrating and rewarding selfish, self-destructive pop stars, "musicians" and sports stars who romanticize the "gangsta" lifestyle. As a culture we might also question the warehousing of children in unnatural pools of adolescents for eight hours a day. How can we expect them to mature when Mom and Dad drive off to a mysterious "adult world" and grandma and grandpa shuffle off to isolated retirement centers? It's difficult to observe and model adult behavior and interactions where there are no adults. Throughout human history children grew up in a healthy mix of age groups. Not anymore. Even zoos know enough to provide a holistic social structure in captive groups of primates. We know more about why young male elephants go rogue in the absence of older males than why adolescent humans do. And we seem to care more, too. Then there's our culture's emasculation of young males who no longer have legitimate outlets for testing and earning their manhood. Young P O R T I N G C 53 L A S S I women aren't the mass murderers. It's always males, the more aggressive sex by nature, but perhaps by nurture, too. Young men in the throes of testosterone poisoning used to measure up by lifting that bale, capturing that horse or helping Dad build that barn. They earned their way into the fraternity. Now, a combination of child safety laws, union rules, fears of lawsuits and a weak job market shunt them into flipping burgers and drinking beer until after high school, if not college. There aren't enough positions on the football team to fill the void. Not every boy can exceed as a jock. They need legitimate outlets to test themselves, succeed and be appreciated for doing good, productive work. These are certainly not all our challenges. We can and absolutely should discuss the wisdom of allowing the dangerously mentally ill to hide in our basements and roam our streets. We should investigate moral relativism, situation ethics, the declining family and more. But demonizing firearms and pinning our hopes on controlling them is not the ultimate solution. C S