ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 10, 1996 TAG: 9610100064
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
WHAT PUTS handguns in the hands of children?
Childish curiosity, often combined with parental negligence, accounts for a certain number of accidental shootings each year. But what about the kid who intentionally arms himself before heading to school? The child who is prepared to shoot to recover wounded pride?
The Gun Safety Institute in Cleveland set out to answer that question by surveying more than 1,100 students in grades three through 12. The answer is not encouraging.
"The kids are telling us that what society is teaching them is that the most aggressive person is always the winner, and the ultimate aggression is the handgun," the institute's executive director, Joella Burgoon, told The Christian Science Monitor.
The study identified four attitudes among children ready to use guns, each an appalling indictment of the actions and attitudes children are exposed to, either in their daily lives or in the popular culture: "Guns and the people who use them are exciting; guns provide both safety and power; physical aggression is acceptable or comfortable behavior; and if offended or shamed, one's pride can only be recovered by violent aggression."
Bang. You're dead.
Has all this aggressiveness made these kids safe and powerful? Frighteningly powerful. But hardly safe: 5 percent of the surveyed youth had been shot; many more had a family member who had been shot. Eighty-seven percent knew someone who had a gun.
Schools and communities that have been shaken by violence have developed strategies to wrest those weapons from immature hands - from a successful buyback program that took 2,600 handguns off the streets in Boston, to student volunteers at a California high school who are prepared to speak up when they know someone has a gun on campus.
At the heart of each successful initiative is the involvement of citizens tired of living in fear, who are willing to work with police to curb violence. After two brothers are murdered, one commits suicide, another kills his 13-year-old best friend while playing with a loaded gun, and Mom is wounded by a stray bullet flying around the neighborhood - the family history of one safety volunteer in Boston - handguns don't look exciting anymore. They just look deadly.
LENGTH: Short : 47 linesby CNB