Do We Have a Culture of Violence in America?
What is going on in America these days with so many mass shootings by young people?
The latest coming from Texas where a teenage boy is charged with fatally shooting eight students and two teachers during his gun rampage at his high school. Reporting over the weekend stated that he was rejected by a girl who then became one of his victims after making aggressive advances, her mother told a local newspaper.
Is it due to America’s love of violence in our movies, TV shows and comic books?
The Washington Times is reporting that the incoming National Rifle Association President Oliver North believes these school shootings are the product of a “culture of violence,” not the Second Amendment.
He is quoted in the article saying on Fox News Sunday:
The problem that we’ve got is we’re trying like the dickens to treat the symptom without treating the disease…And the disease in this case isn’t the Second Amendment. The disease is youngsters who are steeped in a culture of violence.
He spoke about the violence from everything from the violence on television to the number of kids on Ritalin. Ritalin is a drug used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
a brain disorder marked by an ongoing pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interferes with functioning or development.
Attention means a person wanders off task, lacks persistence, has difficulty sustaining focus, and is disorganized; and these problems are not due to defiance or lack of comprehension.
Hyperactivity means a person seems to move about constantly, including in situations in which it is not appropriate; or excessively fidgets, taps, or talks. In adults, it may be extreme restlessness or wearing others out with constant activity.
Impulsivity means a person makes hasty actions that occur in the moment without first thinking about them and that may have high potential for harm; or a desire for immediate rewards or inability to delay gratification. An impulsive person may be socially intrusive and excessively interrupt others or make important decisions without considering the long-term consequences.
On Fox News Sunday Oliver North went on to say:
Nearly all of these perpetrators are male, and they’re young teenagers in most cases, and they’ve come through a culture where violence is commonplace…All we need to do is turn on a TV, go to a movie. If you look at what has happened to the young people, many of these young boys have been on Ritalin since they were in kindergarten. Now, I am certainly not a doctor; I’m a Marine. But I can see those kinds of things happening.
We really need to figure out what is going on, we need to concentrate on the root cause not the instruments that these people are using to commit their heinous crimes.
So often in today’s culture we look for the easy reasons why these things are happening and then we look for easy solutions. Well these types of problems are not easy and the solutions are not easy either.
If we go for the low hanging fruit when it comes to the reasons and solutions we will not do anything other than put a band aid on the problem and it will happen again at the same frequency.
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