PS> With the murder of three high school students recently, I start to
PS> hear echoes of the HCI battle cries for stricter gun-control
PS> legislation. 
Real subject for reflection, this. At least for me. Pearl, Mississippi
recently went through much the same trauma, as I am sure you are aware.
Two of the kids wounded at Pearl were my daughter's classmates last year.
One of them was among her best friends. Had a new job and a move not 
intervened, The Barbarian would have most likely been standing in that
commons area when Luke Woodham opened fire. 
Would any proposed legislation have made a difference? Hardly. Woodham
used a lever action .30-30, a rifle that has been around since last 
century. For that matter, a single barrel shotgun could have been even
worse. Or even a kaiser blade, in a common full of kids. HCI has no 
answers for this kind of thing.
PS> But let me remind this echo in my commentary, that we DON'T need NEW
PS> laws aimed at limiting our right to own a firearm. We need better
PS> enforcement of the existing laws that are already on the books. 
Tougher enforcement of existing laws would not have stopped Woodham. There
is no provision in Mississippi for the death penalty for the crime he 
committed. Were that not the case, and had some of Mississippi's earlier
little monsters been put to death for some of their crimes...then perhaps.
In the absence of this, though, there was not much the authorities could
have done in a preemtive move.
PS> And for
PS> PARENTS TO BE MORE RESPONSIBLE FOR CORRECTING THE WRONGFUL ACTIONS OF
PS> THIER MINOR CHILDREN. BEFORE they get involved in violence, drugs, and
PS> alcohol. 
Here you have a point. Woodham's father was evidently a non-figure in his 
son's later life. With a father who would not tolerate his involvement with
the people he was running with? Who knows. I knew his mother only in the 
vaguest of ways (she was a receptionist at a company that I used to do 
design work for), but one of my old co-workers was a good friend of hers. 
She pretty much seemed to be a single mother who was trying very hard to do 
what was right, but was not able to be father and mother both. She paid with 
her life (her son slit her throat shortly before heading for school).
PS> Michael Carneal will one day answer for his crime, 
Hope they have the death penalty for his crime. He deserves it as richly
as the one that Woodham *won't* get.
PS> which he claims was
PS> inspired by a scene from "Basketball Diaries". Where a young man
PS> knocks a classroom door down, pulls out a shotgun, and then starts
PS> firing. 
Could have been inspired by the news media as well. From Geraldo's bursting
in on church services in the Pearl area and shoving mikes in the faces
of grieving people who were trying to worship, to the nationally televised
illegal jailhouse interview with the little maggot himself, the media has 
done entirely too much to glorify the "poor suffering little picked on" 
image that Woodham and his lawyers are trying to project.
PS> To those whom want to blame the motion picture industry for films like
PS> this inspiring our younger generations to commit such violence. I
PS> answer them with the fact that the movie did not kill 3 innocent
PS> children, and wound 5 others. 
No, they didn't. But I do think that someone steeped in the *mindless* 
violence that Hollywood so loves to portray over and over again during
their formative years can't help but be influenced in unacceptable ways.
Couple that violence with the all too common portrayal of minor - or no -
consequences, and I do think that young minds can be bent. If you don't
believe that the media can influence the way society looks at things 
around them, then how can you explain the widespread acceptance of things
that just a few short years ago were universally decried as abominations?
'Course, this too goes back to parental involvement. If parents were 
monitoring what Hollywood had the chance to force feed their kids, then
it wouldn't be a factor.
PS> Michael Carneal, as the evidence
PS> supports, is the one whom commited the murders, and commited the
PS> carnage. 
Yep. May he fry (hang, be shot, be injected) ASAP.
Direct to you from the keyboard of Larry Gault...
      
... But you thaid it wath a PITH helmet!!
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