Howard McBroom
We Can’t Live Like This
There was a terrible event that occurred recently in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Four girls between the ages of 12 and 14 went into a Walmart store with knives in their hands and stabbed another young girl to death. They then ran out shouting, “We did it - we killed her! We stabbed her in the heart! We don’t care!”
Our society isn’t going to survive if things like this continue to happen. Nobody can live in a world where you have to fear for your daughter’s life every she goes out, wondering if any maniacs will kill her. We all want social justice, diversity, inclusion, and racial equality. We want these things, but we’re not going to get there as long as this kind of violence continues to happen. What are we to make of this – a mass murder every week? If we don’t do something to stop violence, we’re just putting the cart before the horse. We can’t live like this. The sheriffs of Lake Charles, Louisiana were very upset about the murder of that young girl. One of them said he didn’t think the event was a crime problem, but rather a parenting issue. If you’re in an abusive marriage or were raised by people who didn’t know how to deal with problems properly, you’re probably not going to have that many good parenting skills. And if you don’t know how to parent well and your kids fall into the wrong group, the chances of them committing a terrible crime is pretty high. I think our schools should offer classes in parenting as well as classes on how to be a good child. We need to have lectures, mentoring, and roleplaying sessions. We need to teach people the skills they need in order to handle their anger properly. A few years ago in Florida, a teenage boy got into an argument with his mother over a bad grade and he ended up strangling her to death. Because his anger escalated into that raged state, he is now serving 45 years in prison. We’re putting the cart before the horse if we don’t address this kind of violence soon. If we ignore the problem, everything will come crashing down. Emotional intelligence and family intervention classes could be some solutions to our country’s violence problem. What I fear most of these continuous murders is all is the emotional and spiritual damage that is being done. Every parent in Lake Charles, Louisiana is probably petrified after hearing the story of that girl getting killed. They start to picture their own child being killed, and they might even begin to picture their child being the murderer. Imagine how you would feel if your daughter killed another girl in front of everybody at a Walmart store. You’d probably be heartbroken beyond words. You might ask yourself, “Is this the girl I raised? Is this what I brought her into the world for - to kill someone? Is this little girl I had hopes and dreams for? I wanted her to make an impact and do something good, but instead, she did the complete opposite.” Shootings and stabbings rip apart our entire social fabric. They make a of mockery of everything we’re trying to achieve. We’re trying to raise good kids to make the world a better place, but in the end, these children are just turning into killers. If things like this keeps happening, I hope the democrats don’t get blamed for it. People might think liberals are responsible for breaking down family values and turning our country into a slaughterhouse. Unfortunately, this kind of violence happens every week. To help prevent it, we need to do our duty. Schools need to offer parent and child classes that teach proper emotional intelligence skills.
Inclusion, diversity, social justice, racial equality, equality for women - all of these things are necessary, but I don’t think we’re going to get there until we first stop all the violence.