The solution to teen violence

By Christopher M. O'Leary
web posted June 1999

While members of the U.S. Senate decide whether to vote with their conscious or with their biggest campaign contributors, there are still the obvious misleading conclusions surfacing about how to solve teen violence. Youth today are just plain angry and full of angst! Living in the city, I have young degenerates constantly threatening me with violence and doing so with a mouth of a teamster. When I was a youth, which basically I still am, I chose to release frustration through sports or banging on my drums. Youth today have to find a way to release their angst in a positive, less violent manner. Kids either have to learn to channel their anger into something positive or we as society have to find a way to not make our youth so damn angry!

Personally I don't see why the youth of America are so angry. What do they have to be angry about? They are in the most worry free stage of their lives. No rent, no bills, no getting directly screwed over by the government, and basically no real pressure to just survive. At that age I was to busy washing dishes and trying to get adults to but me beer. I was not plotting or carrying out the brutal demise of my classmates. Everyday as responsible adults we have to make important decisions that will have profound affects on our lives. Basically we have to get through everyday without screwing up badly enough as to where it ruins the next day. If anybody should be angry enough to kill a mass amount of people it should be responsible adults. We have the most pressure placed upon us everyday and the most to lose.

While we're on the topic of killing I feel that I must sound even more insane by stating my belief in the principal that there is nothing stopping me from killing someone. The laws that forbid me to kill are not stopping me from killing someone. What is stopping me from killing someone is myself. I have respect for myself and for human life, this is what prevents me from killing someone. My self-respect and hope for the future is what reminds me that I would not be a big fan of prison life. Therefore I choose not to break the law by murdering someone.

More gun laws or even the absolute abolishment of gun ownership altogether won't keep me from killing someone. We really don't need guns to kill. I could just as easily use a knife, a car or a baseball bat. Let's face the facts, if someone wants to kill badly enough they will find a way to do so. Guns just make the killing process easier and quicker, but I must want to kill before the gun becomes my accomplice. We shouldn't be focusing on ways to try and reduce teen violence, but instead focusing on finding out why teens are becoming violent in the first place. It has now gotten to the point that telling teens violence is wrong is not enough, we now have to completely get rid of their option to do right or wrong. We must convince them there is only one option, the right option. This may sound like I want to brainwash teenagers and take away their freedom to think, well I do!

Admit it, society today has become so congested with crap that kids can't decide what's right or wrong. We have to tell them what's right and conceal from them what is wrong.

What our brainstorming public servants in the Senate should be trying to figure is why these kids have no respect for themselves or others. Of course in my opinion it is not up to government to fix this problem, I don't think they can. We have to fix it ourselves and I believe the solution solely rests on the shoulders of parents. My parents raised me to respect myself and respect others. If a person has no self-respect or love for themselves, how do you expect them to respect or love someone else?

Those kids in Colorado obviously hated who they were and incidentally the kids who made fun of them hated them too. But who wasn't made fun of or hated by someone in high school. That's the way high school is and always will be. The same principal holds true throughout the whole country. I mean there's something wrong in this country if we can't even make fun of those who are different than ourselves anymore! I didn't mean to offend anyone by that last sarcastic remark, actually I did, but it's true. We have all shared a laugh or a smart remark about someone, for whatever reason, because they were different than ourselves. Those kids in Colorado risked their lives and their futures to inflict pain on people who basically made fun of them for being different. They ended up killing themselves in the end due to lack of self-respect. These kids were obviously not concerned with their futures. If you have no future then why worry about your actions in the present. Everything is meaningless without having a future to look towards in order to keep your life in check and maintain any significance.

Christopher M. O'Leary can be reached at Bash_17@hotmail.com.

 

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