An editorial in the Bucks County Courier Times. Who writes this drivel?
Bill
Tragedy averted
(Wed, Jul/09/2003)
The headlines might have been different.
How close we came to picking up Monday's newspaper and reading of a Columbine-like massacre in Camden County, with bodies strewn on bloodied floors and survivors crying in anguish and bewilderment.
Instead, an 18-year-old from Oaklyn is behind bars, charged with masterminding a bizarre and potentially lethal plot to execute three people and then shoot some more people at random. Two of Matthew Lovett's friends - one 14 years old, one 15 - have also been implicated.
No lives were lost. This time.
Tragedy was averted when an attempted carjacking went wrong, alerting police to the fact that the three young men reportedly were carrying guns, swords, knives - and an arsenal of evil intentions.
But the incident put the area on notice that its population is as vulnerable as those in Littleton, Colo., and Pearl, Miss., and Jonesboro, Ark.
It also reminded us of two things we desperately need to remember.
One is that guns left in the wrong places inevitably get into the wrong hands.
The other is that parents, teachers, counselors and clergy members cannot be too vigilant in catching warning signals among troubled youths.
Generations of bullied kids have yearned for revenge, as Matthew Lovett apparently did. But only recently, as guns became widely accessible in the home, have these youths had weapons of mass destruction at their disposal.
According to authorities, the boys involved in the Oaklyn incident carried arms legally owned and registered by Lovett's father.
Ceasefire New Jersey is a statewide coalition of groups and individuals trying to stop gun violence.
On Monday, its officials urged parents to remove guns from their homes in the wake of the near-disaster.
Rather than protecting themselves and their loved ones with the firearms, said Ceasefire Board Chair David Matos, these adults are "putting their families, their friends, their neighbors and ... even innocent people outside the home at greater risk of gun violence."
Matos doesn't buy the fiction that parents can store guns at home where kids can't find them, and neither do we. A youngster determined to inflict serious damage can psych out even the craftiest parent's hiding place.
And then there is the issue of bullying.
Dismissed for years as something all kids go through, the incessant cruelty has come under societal scrutiny lately as its devastating effects have been explored.
We surely are not looking to excuse the young men who allegedly plotted to massacre their peers in Oaklyn, any more than we would excuse the two teens who dressed in black trench coats and killed 12 of their fellow students and a teacher in Littleton in 1999.
But teasing is not harmless schoolyard fun. Its toxic effects run deep, and they too frequently give birth to seething, unquenchable rage.
South Jersey got off easy this time. Emphasis on this time. But those of us who live here are permanently on notice that the violence "next door" is a lot closer than we think.
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/143-07092003-121143.html
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Bill
Tragedy averted
(Wed, Jul/09/2003)
The headlines might have been different.
How close we came to picking up Monday's newspaper and reading of a Columbine-like massacre in Camden County, with bodies strewn on bloodied floors and survivors crying in anguish and bewilderment.
Instead, an 18-year-old from Oaklyn is behind bars, charged with masterminding a bizarre and potentially lethal plot to execute three people and then shoot some more people at random. Two of Matthew Lovett's friends - one 14 years old, one 15 - have also been implicated.
No lives were lost. This time.
Tragedy was averted when an attempted carjacking went wrong, alerting police to the fact that the three young men reportedly were carrying guns, swords, knives - and an arsenal of evil intentions.
But the incident put the area on notice that its population is as vulnerable as those in Littleton, Colo., and Pearl, Miss., and Jonesboro, Ark.
It also reminded us of two things we desperately need to remember.
One is that guns left in the wrong places inevitably get into the wrong hands.
The other is that parents, teachers, counselors and clergy members cannot be too vigilant in catching warning signals among troubled youths.
Generations of bullied kids have yearned for revenge, as Matthew Lovett apparently did. But only recently, as guns became widely accessible in the home, have these youths had weapons of mass destruction at their disposal.
According to authorities, the boys involved in the Oaklyn incident carried arms legally owned and registered by Lovett's father.
Ceasefire New Jersey is a statewide coalition of groups and individuals trying to stop gun violence.
On Monday, its officials urged parents to remove guns from their homes in the wake of the near-disaster.
Rather than protecting themselves and their loved ones with the firearms, said Ceasefire Board Chair David Matos, these adults are "putting their families, their friends, their neighbors and ... even innocent people outside the home at greater risk of gun violence."
Matos doesn't buy the fiction that parents can store guns at home where kids can't find them, and neither do we. A youngster determined to inflict serious damage can psych out even the craftiest parent's hiding place.
And then there is the issue of bullying.
Dismissed for years as something all kids go through, the incessant cruelty has come under societal scrutiny lately as its devastating effects have been explored.
We surely are not looking to excuse the young men who allegedly plotted to massacre their peers in Oaklyn, any more than we would excuse the two teens who dressed in black trench coats and killed 12 of their fellow students and a teacher in Littleton in 1999.
But teasing is not harmless schoolyard fun. Its toxic effects run deep, and they too frequently give birth to seething, unquenchable rage.
South Jersey got off easy this time. Emphasis on this time. But those of us who live here are permanently on notice that the violence "next door" is a lot closer than we think.
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/143-07092003-121143.html
from
[email protected]
:banghead: 
