If we measure credibility by a person's ability to objectively seek facts and answers while dealing with gut-wrenching emotions and heartache, we found few measurables in recent weeks as ``experts'' groped to explain the Jonesboro shootings.
The fact is, though, no one can explain why two boys would ambush and kill schoolmates. We point to broken homes, disjointed love, warning signs, unheeded threats, gun availability, TV violence and brutal video games, but all we really have are theories, frustrations and trite assumptions.
The only thing certain is that anyone who claims to know what turned Drew Golden and Mitch Johnson into little killers probably has an agenda apart from the tragedy. Which brings us to the Fund for Animals and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Most people will read about a tragedy, and then wonder what can be done to understand and prevent further misery. PeTA and the Fund for Animals, however, saw it as opportunity to exploit. Anything for the cause.
PeTA heard one of the killers was a hunter, and then sent out press releases titled ``Does Violence Begin with Hunting?'' The Fund for Animals, meanwhile, is now demanding that state agencies curtail youth hunting programs. Have these groups no shame? An Arkansas town is emotionally gutted by an irrational act, and animal-rights activists simplify and capitalize.
The fact is, a hunting background is a rarity in killers and mass murderers. Timothy McVeigh, Jeff Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Speck, James Armstrong, David Spanbauer, Sirhan Sirhan and other infamous, murderous warts were not hunters. And perhaps the worst of all, Adolf Hitler, was an anti-hunting vegetarian. I'll argue that a person who is properly trained to hunt, fish or trap will typically have more appreciation for life and the web of life than those who don't.
Everything I've read about Jonesboro makes me weary of expert commentators and grave-dancers like PeTA. American society is often selfish, paranoid, withdrawn, fractured and urbanized, and yet we try to say kids are ``desensitized to violence'' because they watch Fox TV and play ruthless video games.
Cripes, those are symptoms, not disease. Look how we live. Just two generations ago, we frequently saw a grandparent living in the same home with a family. And almost everyone shared bedrooms with siblings, sometimes many siblings. Parents were authoritative, and not just in their own homes. Few children had a bedroom to themselves, and few master bedrooms came with private bathrooms.
Homes were built with porches in the front yard, not the back. People sat on those porches and watched the world go by, often waving at strangers in cars. Neighborhoods frequently got together for summer parties, and the adults knew each other and everyone's kids. Today, we frequently wouldn't know our neighbors if they butted in front of us at the video rental store.
In short, it wasn't that long ago that living in America meant working to get along inside and outside your home. Now we build houses and neighborhoods to help us avoid situations and relationships that require interaction. We don't want to feel responsible for each other, and we like to blame our heartaches and problems on anything but our own isolation from each other.
It would be easy to blame guns and hunting for Jonesboro. But humans have always hunted, firearms have been around nearly 500 years, and semiautomatic rifles have been around nearly 100 years.
Somehow, though, I doubt Drew Golden and Mitch Johnson would have become quite so notorious if they had grown up in 1890s America.
