LETTERS: LET'S TURN MORE HOUSES INTO HOMES

To the editor:

What in all the wide world is going on at our schools? Why the shootings? Has it come to this, that guns must be banned from all school campuses? My answer: Don't blame guns for the tragedies but the humans who handle those weapons.

Suppose we, in plainclothes police fashion, attempt a little research. We start at a location where such a tragic event occurred and trace our way to a door leading into a house. In the kitchen are husband and wife engaged in a battle of words. Charges and countercharges are darting through the air. In the living room is a TV set on full blast. Some spoiled brats are fussing over everything. In apparent high voltage, words of strife bounce from wall to wall. This attitude seems to prevail: everybody for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.

Well, I believe we have come to the end of our search. The problem sprouts from broken homes and from splintered family life. I emanates from the warped idea that home is a place for you to hang or pitch your hat if you have no other place to go.

In a recent column on the Opinion page of the Southeast Missourian, Paul Greenberg quoted Colin Powell, certainly not a right-wing grand slammer: "Let's stop building jails and start building children." Bravo! On target and right down our lane, Mr. Powell. The Bible in Proverbs 29:15 states, "A child left to himself brings his mother shame." Proverbs 22:6 gives this instruction: "Train up a child in the way it should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

Alexander Pope puts is well: "As the twig is bent, so the tree's inclined." To this we add that some in the top echelons of our nation's society expose not only inappropriate conduct, but also plain debauchery, which is a barrier in removing the problem.

Converting a house into a home would truly help the cause.

The REV. WALTER KEISKER

Cape Girardeau