The Issue: How modern American culture plays a role in school shootings and other mass violence.
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My heart and prayers go out to those poor children, teachers, parents and friends who are caught in the horror of the Sandy Hook attack (“Our Culture of Killing,” PostScript, Dec. 16).
May those who died rest in peace.
What these mass murders show, if anything, is that law enforcement is often incapable of protecting civilians. People have the right to defend themselves, and politicians shouldn’t deny or limit law-abiding citizens from protecting their families.
We should examine the culture in which these misanthropic young men who attack others for no reason have been raised over the last 25 years.
They are taught that values are subjective and that their self-esteem is more important than responsibility.
They are exposed to Hollywood, which glorifies violence. They often play extremely violent video games for hours, which desensitize them to violence. Jim Lawler
New Milford, NJ
While everyone is worrying about America falling off a fiscal cliff, the Sandy Hook shooting massacre of innocent children shows us what happens when a nation falls off a “moral cliff.”
Our kids’ minds are so polluted these days and so much violence has pervaded our society. All the efforts to remove God from our daily lives are bound to take their toll.Donna Pallante
Staten Island
We hear asked repeatedly, “Why weren’t there any warning signs?”
As long as we refuse to fund a mental-health system, and substitute political correctness for good psychiatric judgment, these tragic events will continue to occur.
Peter Welch
Carmel
We need to teach our children ways to increase their self-esteem so that they will never need a gun to make them feel powerful.
They need to have their emotional, physical and spiritual needs met so they are better able to handle hurt, which turns to anger and outrage.
We need to teach them how to deal with anger in a more constructive way. We need more mental-health education.
As a society, we need to learn and recognize the red flags. Every family needs more education to erase the stigma by talking about it.
Most important, we need to develop our faith, to get back to a society that has morals and principles, one that respects and is considerate of other people.
Jane McCarty
Harrison
Many news commentators grappling to explain this horrid event said that evil had visited that community.
This is surely true. For what is evil but a contrast to God’s law?
Yet it is God who has been systematically driven out of American public life, especially the schools, beginning in the ’50s and accelerating ever since.
If this had not been the case, there would have been far fewer such atrocities.
If the killers believed that a quick bullet to their head did not end their responsibility for the evil they’ve done but instead began it, then perhaps that would have stayed the trigger finger of many of them.
Peter Skurkiss
Stow, Ohio
Leonard Greene calls out video games, films and “gun culture” as motivators of mass killing.
He leaves out the greatest impetus for these sick killers — the breathless, exploitative, 24/7 media that give these losers the theater they seek for their twisted drama, guaranteeing that it will happen again as another loser somewhere right now has his eyes hungrily glued to his television and newspapers.
David Schipani
Saco, Maine