By ESTHER RAMOS
Going back long, long ago, when I was a young impressionable child, where I lived, 100% of every household contained an assortment of weapons, most of which were firearms. The children, no matter how young, knew where the guns were located within their own homes, as well as the ammunition, and as the little ones grew up they were included in hunting and trapping and fishing and gigging trips. They were taught how to manage, use, and clean all of the weapons.
At school, and in life, gun displays were common. Even expected in homes and in vehicles. The teenage drivers were more concerned with having a nice rack of firearms in the pickup than with having a sound system at all. Priorities. Remember those? Big engines, big tires, big guns and big trophies you bagged with your big guns. Feed the whole extended family and have a neighborhood cookout.
I’ve got two extremely violent scenarios from my own childhood. In each of these the parties were irretrievably dead. And, amazingly enough, with guns all over the house, none were used. I’m not going to even tell you about the kid who got beaten to death with a barstool.
Example one: The high school band’s bassoon player went into his room one evening to do homework and to go to bed, like normal. He was the smartest kid in the school and everybody knew it. His mom went in to get him up the next day, only to discover him laying face up on his bed, arms crossed, a plastic bag duct taped over his head, around his neck, surrounded by notebooks full of information and calculations regarding lung expansion breath control, oxygen-nitrogen-displacement ratios, cubic inches of air in different sizes of plastic bags and how far one can go into being passed out from lack of oxygen, and still be able to recover. He left himself and his notes as his senior physics science fair project.
We buried him the following week in the cemetery in the local Baptist Church. Any student who wanted to attend got an excused absence.
I opted not to go. There was no investigation to determine if he intended to permanently end his life of not.
Example two: Just down the road there was a 14 year old student named Eddie who lived with his grandparents. A regular-looking boy. Not too outgoing or too athletic. Made Bs and Cs like the majority of the students. No behavior problems. Came to class every day and pushed on like the rest of us.
When his grandma missed two Sundays in a row, her church friends visited and found a vacant house. No grandparents.
An investigation ensued. It was discovered with help from the sheriff’s dogs, that Eddie had slashed his grandparents to death with a big kitchen knife then went out and plowed up a field, threw the grandparents out there naked, disked over and over them and plowed them under.
What I remember most is that in his daily life at school, there was no change in Eddie. He looked the same, acted the same, was the same. This brutality seemed not to affect him. Because he was so young, he did some work program time for a while, but his years were ‘commuted’, and as far as I know, he’s just a regular little old man still out on the family farm today.
Sometimes our youth just do unforeseen, awful, tragic acts. The Lord gives them their agency and they use it for bad. It happens. And no amount of our Government removing freedoms from the resto of us is going to change it.
I’ve got an idea: let’s outlaw plastic bags and kitchen knives! How many school children are slaughtered annual by them running over each other in the cars we buy them? Too many to mention here. Let’s outlaw cars! How many drunk people run over us every year and lower our numbers? Let’s outlaw drinking and driving! Oh… never mind. My mistake. Sorry.
