To the Editor:

As I watched an interview with the mother of the 9-year-old victim of the Tuscan shooting, my heart broke for her.
She said that if we could change things, then her daughter would not have died in vain. That leads us all to the next question of what, exactly, should we change?

In this most recent incident of a too-long list of mass murders, perpetrated mostly by young males, I submit that we should stop training our youth on the “finer” points of walking into an area and killing everyone in sight.
The Hollywood crowd, who are mostly anti-gun, take hypocrisy to a stunning new level and churn out movies which are increasingly violent. The ‘hero’s’ glory is heightened as the body count goes up.

After watching these larger-than-life Hollywood stars commit atrocities on humanity, our youth go home and get personal reinforcement with their video games that teach them to walk into a room and randomly kill everyone in the room.
These games are violent, bloody and completely detached from any human emotion or consequence. The higher the body count, the higher the score. There are no negative consequences, only accolades for the mass murder of unknown people.

Our children spend hours and hours on their computers playing these “games” mostly unsupervised, I might add.
When I have voiced my objection to children and parents about the effect these movies and video games are having on the youth of America, I always get the response that “he or she knows better.” Do they really?

Children only know that to which they are exposed and when that exposure goes on for hours and hours day after day, it becomes engrained.
For those who teeter on the edge of sanity, it only takes a nudge to push them over the edge and they seek out the fame and glory of their heroes by emulating their actions.

I have no knowledge of what movies or video games Jared Loughner watched or played. The media has been too busy trying to tie his actions to fit their own political agendas to investigate anything of substance.
But I think that a real good place to start making the change in our society to honor that little girl’s life is to stop reinforcing mass killing with our youth.

It cannot have any kind of positive affect whatsoever on our children and we are watching the negative affect on the evening news.

— Cheryl Every