LETTERS: ADULTS, NOT KIDS, BEAR MOST BLAME

To the editor:

Recently while at work I overheard a co-worker asking what is wrong with the youth of today in the aftermath of the shooting in the high school in Kentucky. I would like to pose this question: What is wrong with the adults of today?

It isn't the kids who are bringing in drugs to our cities. It isn't the kids who are cranking out movie after movie glorifying killing with guns. It isn't the kids who are buying guns from dealers, but it is the kids who are using them to kill other kids. Somewhere they got the idea that having a gun gives them a certain amount of respect. There is no respect attached to shooting someone. In fact, just the opposite is true. Someone who uses a gun to even the score is nothing but a coward, and no one has respect for him.

Certainly anyone with half a brain would be afraid of the gun knowing what it can do. But that is only fear, not respect. When I was growing up in St. Louis, the one who was respected the most was the one who stood up to others in a one-on-one situation and fought with fists and not guns or knives. These were the truly tough guys, not the idiots who resorted to using a weapon.

One can't help but wonder when the American people are going to get fed up enough with this garbage that they see in the movies or see on television or hear on tapes and CDs. The federal government has taken God out of the public schools and replace him with condoms, metal detectors, gay agendas and other stuff that should not be there. We have no right to criticize the kids of today when we as adults fail them so miserably. A prime example of our failure is the fact that we as parents and educators don't do enough to discourage sex by our teen-agers, but we find it easier to give out condoms saying, in effect, we don't have any faith in you to conduct yourselves in a manner that is responsible and adultlike, so we will give you these so you can be safe.

Until the people of this community and the whole country stand up to the government and say we will no longer tolerate your telling us how to run our schools or when we can speak God's name and when we can't or what curriculum we can use as long as it is politically correct, we will continue to have shootings, high pregnancy rates among teen-age girls, dope in the schools and all the other crap that takes place. Getting back to the original subject -- guns -- I can only say this: Only cowards use guns to settle the score. That makes a great bumper sticker.

WILLIAM E. RINGPFIEL

Cape Girardeau