Jerry Eichenberger
Serious Thumper
Offline
2006 S40. OEM windshield, saddle bags, Sportster
Posts: 2919
Columbus, Ohio
Gender:
|
Volumes have been written on this topic by some very smart folks of all persuasions. I grew up in the 1950s. I had cap pistols, I had a BB gun, and when I became 14, my Dad got me a single shot, 20 gage shotgun for Christmas. I have never murdered anyone as a result of having "toys of violence". But I was raised properly - taught that my cap gun was a toy, not a harbinger of things to come. I was taught that my BB gun was the first step in learning to handle firearms - how to realize that even it could hurt someone if handled improperly, how to carry it muzzle down, and the rudiments of target shooting at soda cans and paper targets. We never used pictures or cut outs of people as our targets. Both of my parents were smart people, although not formally educated beyond high school. There were lots of intelligent people in that generation who never had the opportunity, nor the need, to go to college. You could make a comfortable, middle class living then with a high school education. But a middle class living then was different from what we call it today. We had one car, not two. We never had a boat, motor home, or other such luxuries. We took a vacation once every several years, not multiple times per year. We ate out on birthdays, not several times per week. Our wants and perceived needs were far less than what many people think that they have to have today. Not so today - look at the crazies who have committed the mass murders of the past few years. I mean the kids in Colorado, and the one nut, Adam Lanza who shot up that grade school. They were computer obsessed, played violent games that have the player "killing" people and blowing stuff up. Where are the parents? Who knows? What are they teaching, or are they teaching at all? I could go on for pages, but my main theme is that life is so screwed up now, from single parents "raising" kids, and married parents doing the same, shuffling kids off to a day care center for the most formative years of their lives, to be actually raised by the workers there. How many young boys today belong to Scouts, CAP Cadet program, or other healthy, morals based groups? Few, in my observation, while the great majority play on computers.
|