Main Cause of Their Child’s Behavior?
Are some parents of violent children the main cause of their child’s behavior?When children commit a horrible act such as a school shooting their parents often look for someone or something to blame rather than looking at what role they, as parents, may have had in the tragedy. The often targeted entertainers, video game developers, teachers, drug companies, and writers are rarely, if ever, responsible for such tragic outcomes and, unfortunately, often become victims as a result of lawsuits filed in an attempt to censor or place blame on them. The parents of dangerous children must be scrutinized and sued alongside every other entity being blamed for the heinous crimes that children commit. When two young men, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, went on a shooting spree in Littleton, Colorado, killing fifteen people, including themselves, there was a public outcry for censorship of every type of entertainment and changes in gun laws despite Eric Harris’s journal entry titled, “Last Wishes” asking that no one be blamed, other than himself and Klebold, for the massacre (“Diaries and Journals of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris”, par. 2). After the 1999 school shooting now simply known as Columbine, a “Newsweek” pole showed that, “about half of all Americans want to see the movie industry, the TV industry, computer game makers, Internet services and gun manufacturers and the NRA make major policy changes to help reduce teen violence” (Document 1 of 4, par. 1). According to Dave Cullen in his article “Let the Litigation Begin” several lawsuits were filed against the parents of the two boys responsible for the shooting spree claiming that Harris’s and Klebold’s families, “breached their duty of care” by allowing their sons to amass a cache of illegal weapons (Cullen, par. 5). Although the boys’ parents denied such allegations, they settled out of court for $1.6 million (Cullen, par. 5). Why