THE KILLINGS

                                                           

 When my grandson was a small boy, one day, I watched him playing video games on what, I assumed, was an X-box. I asked him, “What was the object of the game?” and he told me, “To kill as many people as you can.”

The makers of these games, and the movie and television people have done a remarkable job of bringing this carnage to life on the screens. I must say, it’s very realistic with pieces of bone and blood and gore everywhere. It’s almost a “How to do it” video. But now I would like them to tap into their talents to show their clients the effect that sudden death has on someone. Let’s see how real you can show the emotions that come out when some nut case shoots up a theater or a school. Let’s see if you can make the people viewing your stuff–and that’s being kind–feel the loss and the grief when someone’s brother, sister, mother, father or baby is suddenly killed. Let’s see if you can show us what happens to the person, standing next to the person shot in the head, who survives. We don’t want to just see people killed—we want to see how their friends, family and witnesses feel about it. It’s only fair that you show the other side of the story. I’ve been there countless times as a firefighter, and have seen it up close and personal—it’s made me cry. Let’s see if you can make your customers cry, and then, when and if they put that stuff away in the closet, again being kind, or throw it away, I will say “job well done.” And by the way, none of it is age-appropriate.

I firmly believe that, from the moment of birth, it’s what you do and what you don’t do to teach your children about what’s right and what’s wrong, that preprograms them for life. If you leave this training up to peers and others in society, then you must share responsibility for what happens in their lives. Every time one of these tragedies happens, where some person runs amok and takes the lives of others, it’s not just the victims who suffer but the friends and family of the guilty person who suffer too. All to often they are good people and are just as appalled by what has happened as the families of the victims. They will spend the rest of their lives wondering where they failed.

We incarcerate more people in this country than any other country in the world. Why is our society so vicious and cruel? Maybe it’s because we have freedoms not seen in any other part of the world, and freedoms that were never meant to be what they are today. But litigious people have gone to great lengths to misinterpret them to mean, “almost anything goes” when it comes to freedom of speech and behavior. Blame the guns if you want, I don’t care, but the person pulling the trigger is the real killer and someone made them that way. They weren’t born like that.

Yes, my friends, you reap what you sow. This killing in Colorado won’t be the last one, and I’m betting not that much time goes by before there is another one. There is no stopping them, because the time for stopping them has come and gone. Instead, we have all of these newfound freedoms to show our kids how to kill. Is this the freedom we talk about that our veterans fought for? I think not.