Who Is To Blame?

Who Is To Blame?
by Heather Roscoe

"...Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it...They know the Law of Nature; they break it."
-- C.S. Lewis

A thirty year old man should be more than a match for an eleven year old boy, and most children reach puberty before they commit murder. Times, it seems, are changing.

On August 19, Eric Toews was walking home from work in Tacoma, Washington, when he was attacked and beaten to unconsciousness by eight children, aged eleven to nineteen. He lingered in a coma and died four days later.

Naturally, the community is upset. In this case, few people have decided to rally to the children's side excepting their negligent parents who are, doubtless, trying to protect they're own reputation.

Now it's time to place blame. Toews' brother Brian put his feelings bluntly when he said, "I believe they are just bad kids...It's plain old evil is what it is."

Guns are a popular scapegoat, however in this case there were no weapons involved. Nothing but pure brutality, like when Terrence Hunt, nineteen, knee dropped Toews' head 28 times.

The knee drop, taking someone's head and pulling it down while thrusting your knee into their nose or chin, is an extremely damaging and powerful form of attack.

Although it is difficult to understand, anti-gun advocates like to blame accidental deaths, and even premeditated murder on the weapon. This fascinating theory still confuses some skeptics, who are unsure how a gun, an inanimate object, manages to pull it's own trigger.

If a gun is responsible for murder then who's responsible for 28 knee drops? Terrance Hunt's knee?

The second most popular thing to blame is violence in the media. However most media violence involves weapons of some sort, which were not used.

I wish the headlines would have read "MAN KILLED BY BORED KIDS!!!" because that's exactly what they were, according to a parent of one of the little thugs.

That must be the problem, in their poor neighborhood there was nothing for them to do...except, perhaps, participate in one of the activities planned for children at the YMCA or the Boys and Girls club several blocks away from where they live.

So, if guns were not involved, media wouldn't have been responsible without a little more parental supervision and boredom wasn't likely then the culprits must be...

Parent's are blamed for a lot, as a matter of fact, sometimes it is possible to feel sorry for them, but that should not be the case. Uncooperative children are the direct result of poor decisions made by their parents. Those who don't care and let their children do as they please deserve every police officer who pulls in their driveway, every journalist who comes banging on their door and every judge who chastises them. Don't feel sorry for them.

The 11-year-old is believed to be the youngest person ever to face murder charges in the state of Washington. He will not reappear in court until it can be determined if he knows right from wrong yet.

So his parents were negligent in teaching him morals? Guess what? What his parents were not able to teach, other influences could. Even the violence soaked media, with all of it's slime and filth has a basic grasp of right and wrong. The bad guy is always caught and violence without cause is detestable.

A little boy should be able to see right and wrong from his environment, his school, neighborhood. The point is, by the time a child has reached the age of eleven, unless he has lived on a deserted island all life, he knows the basic rules of how to behave.

Children are the result of their parents influence, or lack of influence. A child is like a mirror of their parents. Often parents are able to see their worst traits in their children because children do not hide their faults like adults do. The boy may not know how to resist peer pressure, he may not understand the gravity of his actions, but any savage is able to understand that killing a man is wrong.

In this 'advanced' world of ours we can defy the laws of gravity and fly over the largest oceans, we can launch weapons that have enough destructive capability to destroy our planet, and we can write instant messages to people on the opposite side of the globe. Some might say we've 'arrived'.

When our children are beating and murdering people, what does that tell us about how we've 'arrived' as a society?