A young man, still in awkward changes of life, caught in the tug-of-war between childhood and manhood, picks up a gun, no matter wherefrom, and heads off to school.  He has endured what many before him have suffered.  Perhaps it is because of a pimply face, an unmanly physique, or uneven vocal tones--perhaps a combination of all of these, he is humiliated or shunned by the more popular of his age group, and stores a rage that bares no witness to perspective of experience, nor age.

When we, as adults, look back on similar times and recognize the characters in this common play, we note that things were different then.  We abused our fellows, or were abused ourselves, and never did we suffer the horrors of similar consequences.  "Why now?" we ask.  What has marked this time as different from our own pasts?

The sociologists conduct studies and make their reports, but all that they can ultimately do is to provide us with theories that we never see.  Their volumed work is too long for the 15 seconds they'd be allowed on an evening news sound bite.  All we are ultimately offered is, "when you hear a child talk about killing people, report him/her to an adult; and if you are an adult, report him/her to the police or school authorities."

There will be much talk about the need for stronger forms of gun control.  There will be much talk about the need for better parenting.  There will be much talk about how children grow up in a much more complicated world, and suffer more stress than we did when we were their age.  And finally, there will be that element that has drawn more focus in recent years.  "We need to be more severe in our punishment of juvenile offenders, provide mandatory sentencing, put more young people in prison, and expand the death penalty."

All the while the grim trend is right before our own eyes, yet we refuse to see it.  The scenario is typical and predictable.  A violent crime is committed.  The viciousness is painstakingly portrayed on the evening news, as they hang on every gruesome detail, while we hang on every word like a rubber necker driving by a fatal traffic accident.  The news anchors fain their outrage to draw the viewers, and to increase their ratings.  Someone is arrested and then convicted before trial by the pundits, and then the politicians, beckoned by free campaign time in front of a morbid audience, share outrage and promise to be tougher on crime.  The media and the politicians play out their parts like rabble rousers in an old west saloon, stirring up a lynch mob.  Forget about the law, forget about the judges, forget about the lawyers, they all will only set the killer free.  Kill 'im now!  Make him suffer the way the victim suffered.  Hang 'im high!

There once was a time when we taught our children our compassion.  Our lesson was always that it is wrong to take a human life.  The message now is, "It is wrong to take a human life--except..."  And we fail to understand how loud that word "except" rings in our children's ears.  What they ultimately hear is that it is wrong to kill except when we, ourselves, have been outraged.  We can justify killing given the proper circumstances.

The law was created to be a dispassionate thing.  Revenge has been a problem that has plagued mankind since we began walking upright on this planet.  And it is revenge that the law was created to displace.  Common law was established to prevent us from becoming a nation of Hatfields and McCoys.  Traditionally we have given judges charge of the law, and a jury the facts.  For each case the law and the facts fit together in their own unique form to tell us how the wrongdoer should be punished or rehabilitated and society protected.  But we have now taken up the idea that we know more than the judge and the jury by the sound bites we get from the Six o'clock News.

"Punish all devils the same," we command, as our prisons grow larger and more plentiful.  We have transformed prisons into a capitalistic dream come true; to the extent that crime and punishment is a lucrative enterprise.  And our anger and our outrage grows.

"But we only kill the killers," we maintain.  "Kill them--hurt them--make them suffer.  Only then can we have 'closure.'  When the killer dies, our outrage is ended."  All the while, our children look for the end to their own outrage, whatever the cause, no matter the perspective.  They are too young to grasp and weigh perspective.  Yet outrage must have closure.

Do we ever finally realize, that when we justify killing to our children, our children will learn to justify killing?