Columbine Wil
Happen Again!

Following are excerpts from an arti-
cle by Dr. Reuven Bar-Levav that
appears on his Web site,
wvvw.beabetterparent.com .

DR. REUVEN BAR-LEVAV
Special to the Jewish News

N

. ow that the Littleton
tragedy has been
plumbed to its depth
and exploited by the
media ad nauseam to satisfy the
voyeuristic appetite of the viewing
public, pundits, bureaucrats and
other so-called "experts" generally
end up with the same conclusion:
we need more and better gun con-
trol. We bemoan our "culture of
violence" and naively hope to con-
trol or reverse it by enacting
stricter laws.
Why do we come up with this
recommendation again and again
at times such as this? Because we
ourselves feel anxious, impotent
and powerless as we face such hor-
rors. it is very hard to admit that
no panacea or easy solutions exist.
Pushing to do something lessens
our anxiety, even if it accomplishes
nothing....
The teenage killers at
Columbine High School broke
existing laws to obtain the weapons
they used illegally, and in the
future determined "sickles" will
also find whatever they seek, no
matter what laws exist on the
books. Tight controls that seal all
possible leaks are impossible in our
free society. Since guns and drugs
exist, some people will abuse them-
selves and others with them,
though it's illegal to do so. Car
accidents will always happen, even
after we develop much safer cars.
We need better answers to lessen
such tragedies.
What motivates kids and
grown-ups to murder innocents is
not the presence of guns but the
absence of built-in values of right
and wrong, one of the breeding
grounds of blind hate. This urgent-
ly needs to be changed, though no

immediate solution is possible.
Ours is a permissive society that
accepts, and even idealizes, an
almost unlimited freedom to do
whatever people feel like doing, all
in the name of self-realization.
Everyone resents restrictions, but
we have legitimized any and all
forms of behavior in the name of
self-expression. The absence of
widely accepted norms of ethical
behavior is damaging to us all, and
especially to the young who are
inexperienced in life. We must
reestablish sqrne of our old, tradi-
tional norms to lessen future hor-
rors like this one.
Many people in our society
become furious and even ugly
when anyone dares to question
their behavior, as if it was an
unjustified invasion of their pri-
vacy and an infringement on their
human rights. When instant grat-
ification is denied, many react as
if they have been robbed of their
birthright....
Because of our understandable
eagerness to separate church and
stare, many parents and teachers
have also separated themselves
from such well-tested biblical rules
as the Ten Commandments. Is it
then surprising that many kids
grow up never learning that "Thou
Shalt Not Kill?" And the confusion
is increased by repeatedly being
exposed to the fantastic tales of
James Bond, Die Hard and
Terminator, where people are shot
and mutilated without dying, and
made worse yet by Nintendo
games that give points for extra
cruelty
It is difficult to accept that trag-
ic events such as the one in
Colorado are impossible to avoid
altogether in complex, modern
societies such as ours. This will
happen again. But they can be
minimized. This will not happen
by preaching gun control but by
enrolling ourselves individually and
as a society in the ongoing task of
lessening our excessive permissive-
ness. 11

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1999

Detroit Jewish News

15