Ever stop to think about what kind of society our children are growing up in these days? Kids, even as young as six, are shooting classmates over trivial confrontations on playgrounds in schools. It’s a sick, sad world.

In the past few years, there has been an abundance of school related shootings in the US, the first of which occurring near our area. Barry Loukaitis opened fire during algebra class in Moses Lake, Washington wearing a trench coat. Loukaitis killed the teacher, two students, and injured a third. He was only 14. His attorneys argue that the music video for Pearl Jam’s 1992 hit "Jeremy" was in part to blame for his acting out. Now, if you have ever seen this video (such as I have), the main idea consists of a very disturbed young boy that comes to school shirtless one day and kills his classmates. I took the video as a warning of sorts; I interpreted it as telling people not to make fun of kids who don’t talk much at school, because one day they could just snap. Barry Loukaitis’s lawyers insisted that those images and the chorus of the song ("Jeremy spoke in class today...") helped push him over the edge. I beg to differ.

All too often, the media tries to find scapegoats for bad things that happen in our nation. Take for instance, one particular school shooting: Columbine. Everyone blames different things, whether it be Marilyn Manson, music in general, movies, video games, the Internet, or the NRA. Personally, I enjoy listening to Rammstein and Marilyn Manson, I love the Internet, music is my life, and movies are great. Does that mean that I’m going to shoot everyone in my school? I don’t think so. Another thing I simply do not understand is why they blame the so-called "Goths" in schools. For the most part, going gothic is simply a way of expressing yourself. Schools make it so hard to be an individual, people have to get weirder and weirder to make themselves stand out. Under all that make-up and black clothing, Goths really aren’t that bad.

As far as music is involved in the shootings, I don’t get how the media can blame Nirvana, Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, and KMFDM for crazed maniac kids shooting other kids at schools. Marilyn Manson is rather odd; I will give them that, but why blame him for the kids that go on shooting rampages? He didn’t do anything to them to make them kill. He simply makes music, and it’s up to the consumer whether to decide to buy that music or not. It’s their fault, not Marilyn Manson’s, or any other band for that matter. The same goes for video games and movies. It’s your own dang fault if you buy that stuff or not.

Another thing the media blames is the trench coats. Lets just see how really idiotic this is. Maybe I like to wear big yellow galoshes to school. They bring me great pleasure and joy when I wear them. Then, say, some crazy psycho decided to go on a shooting rampage wearing big yellow galoshes. Parents and teachers and students would freak out and insist I am going to be a mass murderer simply because of my big yellow galoshes. People would say, “Wearing big yellow galoshes is just plain weird. I don’t know why anyone would wear such things to school.” I would be forced to quit wearing my galoshes. It’s the same sort of situation with the trench coats. I think people wear what they do because of what they want. The "popular people" are afraid of being thought to be weird; people like Star and I dress the way we do because we don't want to blend in, but we're not idiots that just want attention; and the cape-type drama people want to be original but feared. It’s all a matter of expressing yourself.

I believe parents also play a large part in the situation. Most of them saw the warning signs and either chose to ignore them, or didn’t realize them for what they were. Kip Kinkel, the gunman for the Springfield, Oregon killings, was obsessed with guns. His parents weren’t gun enthusiasts, but he was, and he took it way too far. He was known to have mood swings and a bad temper, which deterred his parents from giving in to his obsession for a while, but finally they agreed to it and bought him a gun. Because of his attitude, they were debating whether to get him a simpler, less powerful gun, or a more powerful rapid-fire semiautomatic Ruger rifle. Unfortunately, they opted for the Ruger rifle. Kip used the gun to fire off 50 rounds at his high school, after killing his parents the night before. In the end, Kip killed both of his parents, one student, and wounded 19 others. The story goes that he killed his parents and then spent the night watching South Park episodes on TV while his parents lay dead nearby. Sometime that night he decided to kill kids at his school, and the rest is history.

Tying this all together isn’t that big of a feat. If you’re still looking for someone or something to blame these tragedies on, I would go for the parents. Barry Loukaitis’s mother used to tell Barry she wanted to tie up her estranged husband and his girlfriend and make them watch as she shot herself to death. If that isn’t just the least bit weird, what is? I mean, if you want someone to blame things on…Jeeze. It’s not that hard. And what possessed Kip Kinkel’s parents to purchase him the rapid-fire semi-auto instead of the less powerful gun? They knew full well of his weird moods and bad attitude. How did that six-year-old in Michigan get ahold of a gun to shoot his fellow classmate? What caused him to think that shooting little Kayla was going to solve his problems? The event that supposedly caused it was that the two had had a confrontation on the playground the day before. What kind of a reason is that to go shoot someone, especially for six-year-olds? Where did he get that idea?

There are so many questions, yet no one has the answers. There are reasons that the state of society today scares me--everyone thinks they know what the cause of the problem is, when really, no one does. If parents would just take the time to talk to their kids about anger management and such, I bet a lot of children could be saved.