OPINION: Mind Control

By JERRY THOMAS


Recent shootings at high schools in Florida and Maryland has prompted numerous protests in the past several weeks across the country directed at the violence triggered by using a firearm: from gun deals raising the minimum age to purchase a firearm to twenty-one, from those who left a legion of shoes on the White House lawn, and colossal marches gathered every week from coast-to-coast.

Why not ask about the violence that occurs daily without using a gun? Many have lost their lives over the years from violence that comes from many other different forms without using a gun: from another type of weapon, verbal abuse, vehicles that are driven by drunken motorists, just to name a few.

So the problem is not just necessarily gun control because a large number of homeowners own a gun of various types whether for protection, recreational use, or both, but they all are not living in a violent state of mind.

The problem seems to be that much attention needs to be focused on developing an individual's saneness to love yourself, which will "trigger" down to loving one another, showing you that the only way to solve a matter is not by pulling a "trigger." Especially since we hear over and over again to pray for our school children when prayer was actually taken out of schools (for various different religious beliefs), which means that a lot of our youth may not even know how to pray for themselves.

Violence has played a part in numerous societies around the globe since the beginning of time. The world is now at a point where all of us who are able-bodied adults need to pitch in to assist in developing our youth's mind into a more regulated state of respect for someone else's life.

This can happen if a new curriculum for teenagers is placed in our schools, less violence in the lyrics of music and scripts for television shows, and parents taking more responsibility of the children they bring into this world. In other words, mind control needs to take the stage over gun control.