My biggest concern, is the rapid growth in school violence that has taken the popular role today among teenagers in Middle School, High School and Colleges. After following the recent events of school shootings and gun scares, I started asking myself:
- Why are so many kids today willing to take their own lives and the lives of other so randomly?
- What is pushing these, very young people with unlimited opportunities, over the edge?
- How come we don't see this coming?
- Why is nothing being done to prevent it from happening?
- How are these kids getting the guns? Where are their parents?
What ever happened to taking books to school? When did guns become the new substitute?
After following the developing stories i decided to take an approach at figuring out the commonalities that the attackers all shared. My study showed that friends (or lack of them), stress (family, school, etc), and anger supplied the motivation for most of these attack.
Friends:
Its clear that most of the people who commit to such acts were loners, anti-social or just outcasts in the eyes of their peers. I believe that this single reason (collectively speaking) determines how and when these malicious acts of violence and selfishness will occur.
We need to start pay more attention to young people and show that we are concerned about how they feel and how we can help them with their problems. My only hope in sharing my thoughts on this subject is that others who read it would feel as compelled as I do to help prevent school shootings. Let's reach out to the younger generation and be a FRIEND to them let's not just push them aside and classify them as outcasts.
And remember:
"Guns are like assholes, nothing comes out of them with a positive purpose."
- Mark Thomas
Disclaimer:
I am not the best writer and my vocabulary might be limited to a few adjectives and clever maneuvers for play on words, but I'm not trying to win a prize of my literature I want to inspire others to be positive and proactive leaders.