In Paducah, Ky., 14-year-old Michael Carneal entered his high school during the pre-school hours carrying five guns. He found the room where a group of his friends were holding a prayer meeting and began shooting to kill. Three girls were shot dead. Another six were wounded. One is permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
How could a normal child commit such a despicable crime? How could he shoot down his friends in cold blood? While the absolute number of crimes is down, the nature of crimes committed, particularly by the very young, continues to shock and dismay us.
Normal teenaged girls have given birth in toilet bowls and then left their offspring in trash bins. Other normal kids have lured strangers to their homes--in New Jersey it was a pizza delivery man--for the pure pleasure of killing. In New York, two middle-class teenagers killed a wino they had met in Central Park and then attempted to mutilate his body so that police would be unable to identify him.
The streets of inner cities are pock-marked by the sites of casual murders; murders for sneakers, murders for clothes, murders over basketball games and murders because someone "dissed" someone else.
Michael Carneal says he was inspired by the movie "The Basketball Diaries," which features a dream sequence in which a kid who is teased gets revenge by killing his classmates with a shotgun.
Our kids are marinated in violence from an early age. The images they see and hear--from Nine Inch Nails to Marilyn Manson--are so grotesque that they dull the senses.
Clearly, the causes of violence are complex. There have always been tormented teenagers. But only recently have they thought it reasonable to blow their classmates away with shotguns. If I were a Hollywood producer who put before the eyes of impressionable kids images that glorify violence, I would find it awfully hard to sleep at night.