LEGISLATIVE REPORT: ADDRESSING YOUTH VIOLENCE IN AMERICA

Memorial Day has come and gone, signifying the beginning of summer and school breaks. Our children will be home for the summer. They may spend their summer months working, going to camp, playing baseball or traveling with friends and family. No matter what our children are doing and no matter where they may be, we as parents are always concerned for their safety and well-being.

The tragedy in Littleton, Colo., and the more recent shooting of five youngsters in Conyers, Ga., has left all of us even more concerned about the safety of our children. In fact, there have been 14 school shootings in the last four years, six of which have occurred in the last 14 months alone. One of my daughters, Katharine, is 17 and threats have been made in her school. My daughters and I have been talking about this a lot. The people I've heard from and spoken with in Southern Missouri are worried about it. I believe that we must work together to restore to American families a sense of security and control over their own lives. We shouldn't be afraid to send our children to school. Our children shouldn't be afraid to go to school.

Some in Congress are using these recent events to bolster their persistent attack on our Second Amendment rights. I don't think that enacting stricter gun controls will get to the heart of the problem of youth violence in our schools and in our communities. This approach merely attempts to put a band-aid on a symptom of a deeper problem in our American society - a problem that can't necessarily be fixed by spending more money or enacting more laws.

Congress passed the Education Flexibility Act this spring, and it has been signed into law. This law gives states and local school districts more control in deciding how the $10 billion in annual federal education funds can best be spent to teach our children and keep them safe - including school safety and programs to prevent youth violence. By giving parents and teachers the tools to identify troubled children and help them, we can help prevent problems from erupting into violence.

Our courts and police must also have the tools they need to make our society safe for families in our great nation. To help prevent future violence, we must make sure that we are fully enforcing existing laws. It is a federal crime to bring a gun to school. Over the last two years, 6,000 children were sent home for bringing a gun to school. But only 13 of these children were prosecuted under federal law.

Law enforcement authorities estimate that persons under the age of 18 commit more than one-fifth of all violent crime. We need to have laws that provide for swift and severe punishment of violent offenders, even if the offender is a juvenile. We must send a strong signal that our communities will absolutely not tolerate violence. As such, I believe that violent juvenile offenders should be tried as adults in our courts.

Investing more resources in school safety and fully enforcing existing laws is a start to preventing youth violence. But we must also deal honestly with the forces in our American culture that contribute to this problem. Our culture has been under assault for decades by policies and attitudes that degrade the family and diminish the value of human life. By the age of 18, the average child witnesses 200,000 acts of violence and 16,000 murders, and we call that entertainment. Our children engage in realistic video simulations of ultra-violence, and we call them games. God has been driven out of our classrooms and children wearing swastikas are allowed in, and we call that self expression.

As we head into the summer months, let's each of us take the time to listen to and talk with our children. We need to pull together as families and as communities to reclaim control of our lives, the future of our children, and the future of our nation. We need to teach our children to respect the law and each other. Only then can we do what needs to be done to restore a sense of real security for families in Southern Missouri and across the United States. If ever there was a time for families and community leaders across the country to come together in a serious dialogue over the safety of our children and the future of our nation, that time is now.