EDITORIAL Bad week for kids, but pendulum may be swinging
Its no big deal anymore,
a 16-year-old was heard remarking about the coverage of the school shooting in
Santee, Calif., March 6 by a 15-year-old who allegedly shot and killed two and
wounded 13. The next day, as if to prove the point, a 14-year-old girl walked
into a Catholic school in Williamsport, Pa., and wounded a 13-year-old
classmate.
It was a bad week for kids. In Florida on March 9, 14-year-old
Lionel Tate received a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. He was 12
years old when he beat to death a 6-year-old playmate. He said he was imitating
professional wrestlers at the time.
Teenage shootings, a juvenile killing, and the panic about
our kids begin anew. The angst over the breakup of families, the
awful alienation some kids feel and the effects of a violence-soaked popular
culture bubble to the surface once again. Helplessness is the cloud that
overhangs a new round of funerals, special counseling sessions and
community-wide grieving.
We can take the logical, immediate, preventive steps in our
schools, as Sr. Mary Angela Shaughnessy outlines in the story on page 3. We can
take the deeper trails into new kinds of education leading to long-range
solutions, as Sr. Mary Lou Kownacki suggests on page 18. The unshakable and
disturbing sense remains, however, that something out of control, something we
cant quite get our hands on, is disturbing our kids.
The incidents spotlight two peculiarly U.S. obsessions -- the need
to have easy and unimpeded access to firearms and the need to punish harshly --
that might provide some hint of whats gone out of control and what might
be changing.
The pendulum may be swinging toward reason on the matter of trying
youngsters as adults and sentencing minors.
To his credit, even prosecuting attorney Ken Padowitz recoiled
when Broward County Judge Joel T. Lazarus imposed a mandatory life sentence on
Tate. This was a vicious, horrible murder. But I do not think that life
is the appropriate sentence, Padowitz said.
Our penchant for locking up and throwing away the key has gone
over the edge and it took a life sentence for a 14-year-old to cause a
stir.
Latest word has it that a clemency petition, backed up by the
prosecutor, is on a fast track to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has said he would
consider it.
This should not be a difficult decision. Certainly a measure of
mercy will find a sentence that takes into account the severe nature of the
crime and consideration of the victims family without destroying another
young life in the doing.
Taking on the fanatical gun culture in this country, so far beyond
the limits of reason that no amount of domestic violence should be surprising,
is quite another matter. The cases of kids killing other kids with weapons from
their parents or grandparents arsenals has numbed us against
shock.
The situation is inexplicable. At one level concern over our
kids safety can be extreme. The technology of safety -- from car seats to
cribs to in-home monitoring systems has become part of our lives. We are on
hyper-alert for any signs of child abuse. Yet parents rarely, if ever, are held
accountable when a child gets hold of a weapon and goes on the hunt for other
humans. What message are we sending?
The message says life is precious, but only to a point. We have to
maintain access to weapons and when the inevitable happens, we have to have
access to punishment without mercy. Justice isnt even suggested.
There are signs, however, that our common sense is awakening
regarding both.
The National Rifle Association has a new friend in the White
House. President Bush, as governor of Texas, backed laws allowing citizens to
carry concealed weapons and making it more difficult to sue gun
manufacturers.
But as a recent New York Times analysis pointed out, even
with the Bush election and the overwhelming strength of the NRA, significant
signs exist that gun-control forces are being heard. Of the seven Senate
races where the NRA spent the most money, five of its candidates lost,
the Times wrote. All five of the losers were NRA allies and all
were replaced by advocates of gun control.
In addition, ballot measures in Colorado and Oregon requiring gun
buyers to undergo background checks at gun shows passed overwhelmingly,
though the NRA spent $1.7 million trying to kill them.
Taking on the gun lobby and injecting mercy into our penal system
will not solve all the problems. Maybe, though, acting in those arenas will
begin changing the message our kids hear. Maybe theyll begin believing
that all life is precious -- and that we still think kids -- all kids -- are a
big deal.
National Catholic Reporter, March 23,
2001
|