PLATFORM : Get Tough With the Offenders, Then With Their Parents

The paper has informed us that another high school student had been shot dead on campus. That’s two in a few weeks. Two too many. Well, what are we going to do about it? For a starter, how about getting tough, really tough with the offender; then with the parents.

For the past five or six years, six to eight of the school-age gun-toters have been sent to me for counseling. One of them last year was suspended for a week, another for three days, and one of them was given a slap on the wrists. In not one instance was anything done to the parents.

Get tough? How tough? Throw them out of school. Never allow anyone who carries a weapon--either a gun or knife--to school ever be allowed to be enrolled in a Los Angeles public school again. Period.

I say punish the parents also. My experience is that parents are not paying enough attention to their children. They do not know their children’s friends, often do not know where their children are; many of them don’t care. In the past 15 years I have had roughly 750 parents and their children in my office. From 70% to 90% of our parents do not know the first thing about parenting. They know how to make babies, but not what comes next.

There should be a waiting period before (people) are licensed to be wed, during which they must take a class in parenting. You can’t drive a car, add a room to your house or go into business without studying for a license, yet we allow the most delicate and serious work to which man is called to be indulged in by persons almost totally unprepared.

Why should we have to frisk our school students? It’s ridiculous. Get rid of the guns.