www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/pmupdate/s_433534.htmlLet's face it -- guns do kill people
By Mike Seate
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
A funny thing happens to our memory when kids use guns.
When the Columbine massacre happened in April 1999, parents and school administrators forgot all about the weapons used to kill 12 students, one teacher and the two assailants. They instead blamed alternative rock singer Marilyn Manson, Sega video games and Gothic rock music in general.
Some parents and commentators thought the shooting was proof that MTV should be banned, or at least the sale and wearing of black trenchcoats like those worn by the two shooters. The gun industry, which manufactured the murder weapons, didn't suffer much.
It's about to get another chance to shirk responsibility if Republican state Rep. Michael Diven, of Brookline, gets his way. Diven recently announced his version of a solution to school shootings in our own city.
Diven is introducing legislation that would give adult time to juveniles convicted of using guns within 300 feet of a school. If the bill becomes law, kids older than 12 will end up doing two years per offense. They will be housed right alongside lifers, rapists and other hardcore adult criminals in hardcore adult prisons.
Diven was reportedly moved by a Feb. 21 drive-by shooting at Homewood's Westinghouse High that wounded 16-year-old student Aaron Henderson.
On one hand, we owe props to any suburban politician who cares enough about Pittsburgh's inner-city and the people who live there to draft a bill that could change their lives.
But what Diven forgets is that a lot of kids from places like Homewood couldn't give a spent shell casing about doing two years or 10. Worse yet, what Diven seems to have forgotten -- along with some parents and so-called experts -- is that without guns, there wouldn't be any school shootings.
Sure, it's easy to blame rap music, gangster culture and bad parenting for what happened outside Westinghouse last month. Some of those criticisms are valid. A few of them even contain a morsel of truth.
But until we take away the tools that make it so easy for petty high school disputes to turn deadly, all the bills and all the hard time behind bars isn't going to stop the killings.
Mike Seate can be reached at
[email protected] or (724) 320-7845.