Dear USA...

Dear fellow citizens of the US,

Like most of you, I've been thrown for a loop by the many mass shootings that have occurred over the last few months.  Today, one hit a little too close to home for me to ignore.  The first day of school is supposed to be a day of promise of good things to come, but the students of Perry Hall High School were robbed of that happiness when a student opened fire in the cafeteria during the first lunch period of the year.  I'm not sure what to think or how to act, when I hear these vivid accounts of students and parents alike.

It's hard not to villainize the men that have monopolized our airwaves lately, beginning with the movie theatre shooting in Aurora, then DC, and NY.  They've taken life and hope from so many, and they deserve to be punished.  They don't deserve to enjoy their lives when their victims can't.  They deserve to feel a little of that pain that the families of their victims felt.  However, in today's case, that eye for an eye mentality takes a bit of a hit.  The shooter at Perry Hall is a 15 year old kid.  What he did was not the answer to any problem and he deserves to pay for his sins but he's a kid...What was going through his mind and what kind of life drove him to such a rash decision? It's wrong to think that a kid shooting another kid elicits this response when an adult committing the same crime doesn't.  But for a lot of us that's the case, there's no getting around it.

 Why this sudden surge in violence has been so prevalent recently, I've no good reason.  But if anything can come out of these acts of desperation, it's this:  We need to focus on being better.  I'm not naive enough to think that a kind word will make a psychopath, not a psychopath.  That's not what I'm saying.  Some people are just bad people.  There's no understanding or reason for it and some people are brought to that point by situations.  What I'm proposing is this, why can't we counteract these acts of cruelty, by just being good? Share a kind word with a stranger.  Volunteer for a good cause.  Talk to each other.  Erase Hate from your vocabulary. Love...

I know this seems a simplistic answer to an incredibly difficult problem.  But, the best way to deal with the irrational, is, by simply, being rational.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen