Infinite Diversity In Infinite Combinations
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How to keep your child from becoming either a killer or a victim

The recent rash of school killings do have a few things in common. Depressed kids, who felt like outcasts, who had little or no parental involvement in their lives, who had an interest in violent video games and movies, and who developed an interest in self protection. While males have been the actual gunmen, females have also been involved in procuring weapons and choosing targets.


It seems to me that Catholicism holds the answer. First, how to prevent your child from becoming a killer. Listen when they told you what happened at school today. If the principal or teacher calls you in for a "behavior problem", make sure the kid is present at the meeting and make sure your child knows you're in his/her corner, fighting for them. Monitor your child's computer usage, and take warning when they play violent true-life shoot them up games like Quake and Doom. Finally, remember the new law even if it doesn't pass: NO GUN OWNERSHIP UNTIL 21! And show them that there are peaceful solutions to our problems.


Second, and equally important, is how to prevent your child from becoming a victim. Teach them to be like Christ, to search out and befriend the outcasts. Teach them that the behavior of the "in crowd" is wrong. Teach them to stick up for the little guy, and not to discriminate based on race, religion, or intelligence level. Finally, teach them the proper answer to the question "do you believe in God?" which SHOULD be "I believe he's in you." If you do this, then when there is a shooting in your child's school, they will be picked out, not to be killed, but rather, to survive. And maybe, just maybe, they will have enough of an influence to make a killer stop and think.


Finally, most important is taking part in your child's school. Yearly, somebody should be stepping forward to call for an end to cliques, and end to "in-crowd", an end to making people into outcasts.


This advice does not come from a parent (yet). Rather it comes from someone who could have been one of the shooters, had guns been as available in our society in 1986 as they are today.


This document will be updated from time to time. From now on, I'll put the new material at the top.


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