This Law Hurts More Than Helps

I didn’t vote in this state’s primary. I’m not apathetic. I’m just one of those teens who California’s voters recently decided was old enough to be imprisoned with adults but was not yet old enough to vote.

I have a friend across the country who was a victim of an equally confusing law. One day in 1996, my friend Mario, then an eighth-grader, met up with a group of new friends on his way to school in Durham, N.C. One of them brought a gun.

Near the bus stop, one of the boys pointed the gun at a youth who wasn’t part of the group. Scared out of his mind, “the victim” shut his eyes. The gun clicked. Seconds later, unharmed, he opened his eyes. The “shooter” knew the gun was unloaded.

When the bus came, the gun was passed to Mario. Word of the gun incident spread around school like a disease spreads among people without an immune system, and before long, school officials found it in Mario’s locker.

Following a zero tolerance policy for weapons on school property, a reluctant judge suspended Mario from school for 365 days. One full year, with no tutor, no books, no education.

How does sending him to the streets help society? It seems to me this would do more damage than good.

I’m not saying that what Mario and his friends did was right. It was thoughtless and extremely dangerous. But one thing’s for sure: Mario’s punishment did not fit his crime.

Children have too easy access to guns. Many are exposed to violence and chaos at an early age, and don’t have love or any kind of stable home. To change anything, we need laws that attack the problem, not the people.

Instead of putting adolescents on the streets without an education, why not sentence them to after-school community service, get them involved in violence and drug awareness programs, have them help clean up the city, plant trees?

But this is just one of the laws that hurt our society more than they help. Recently, adults passed another one of these laws: Proposition 21, which allows the state to try children who commit crimes to be tried as adults.

Adults should be leading us on the right path. They need to provide a safe environment, with no guns in the house. They need to stop getting divorced so easily. They need to be responsible for us, and not abandon us to the streets or jails.

My friend Mario was lucky. His family stood behind him 100%. His mother tried to have his verdict changed and asked for learning materials. When school officials turned her down, she got a community center coordinator to give Mario a job and found him a volunteer tutor.

Mario was strong. Even though the law was hard on him, with help from his parents and other adult friends, he continued his education and tried to help society as much as he could while he was suspended, and now is doing his best to graduate.

I have often heard the question, “What is wrong with these kids?” But my question is, “What is wrong with the adults who make laws in this society?”