Re: gun control

[Ron Force <rforce@uidaho.edu>]

As Richard Cohen said in today's Washington Post (excerpt):

...The teenage market is huge and rich. Last year, teenagers spent $141
billion, or $4,548 each. If you think this market is not going to get
what it wants, you don't know America. Here, the consumer is king. Just
look at the summer movies or most of what's on television. This culture
caters to the young because the young have money and the determination
to spend it.

So, if some kids think high school is worth both murder and suicide, it
is not only because they have lost sight of reality on account of
computer games. It's also because they have been told by every fiber of
commerce that the artificial, juvenile, astoundingly superficial world
of high school is the ultimate reality -- a loss of perspective that is
often funny, but can easily turn tragic. No one ever says, Grow up! Shut
up! Instead, it's, Do it! Spend it!

This is who we are. This is who we've become. There is no turning back
and there is no controlling the Internet. There is, though, one element
of the Columbine tragedy that is controllable -- the guns. The event was
extraordinary but, in a way, the victims were typical. They were just
some of the 1,000 or so kids annually killed by firearms.

In the weeks since the Littleton massacre, tragedy has ripened into
travesty. A hypocritical president asks Hollywood to clean up its act
and then begs it for campaign money. But it is Congress that takes the
cake. It piddles around with gun control measures that are truly
pathetic. Child locks, background checks, raising the age.

In the one area where something tangible and immediate can be done,
nothing of real consequence will happen. An ocean of guns will be
reduced by a pint here or there. This is the culture that really made
Littleton possible -- a government as smitten with guns as the kids who
wound up using them. 

© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company 
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Ron Force					rforce@uidaho.edu
Dean of Library Services			(208) 885-6534
University of Idaho				Moscow 83844-2350
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