Tuesday, September 25, 2007

senseless.

Three feral kids break into a rural home in North Carolina to burglarize it.

The only person in the house is the 12-year-old daughter, who's staying home from school with strep throat.

The intruders, surprised to find someone present, shoot her dead.

They are quickly captured, and found to be 16, 18, and 19 years old.

You know, whenever I read stuff like this, I want to crawl back into my bed and spend the day with the covers over my head. How do you deal with kids who not only think they're entitled to other people's stuff, but who also kill a seventh-grader without hesitation simply for being present? Follow the link and look at the picture...that girl couldn't have been a threat to those three, except maybe as a witness. A life snuffed out in a blink, all for some jewelry and a few household electronics to pawn.

What ticks me off almost as much is the snippet about the girl's classmates, and how the school is dealing with the situation. They bring in a bunch of grief counselors, and the principal is quoted as saying:

"Mostly, we just want to make sure the students are feeling safe, that they're feeling comfortable, that they can go on through the grief process..."


Are we not doing our children a great disservice when we lie to them in such a manner? Is it not wiser to make them aware of the evil that exists in the world--aware of the fact that life isn't safe? Don't we prepare them much better for real life if we tell them that there are people out there who will hurt or kill them without thinking twice about it? Instead, they coddle these kids, making sure they're "feeling safe and comfortable", and pretending that such events are really only bad dreams, and that it can't happen to them.

Life isn't safe. Sometimes, the wolves are at the door, and they won't listen to reason or compassion. That's a scary thought, but that's reality, and it won't go away by closing your eyes and wishing it weren't so.

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