14 DAY TRIAL // Maybe the Pope was right. Yesterday an Ohio School was locked down when one of the students threatened to bring a 9mm gun to school. The kid used Xbox Live as means of communicating his intentions to a friend but was caught and arrested immediately by the Pickaway County Sheriff's department.
Teays Valley Superintendent Jeff Sheets said: "Our suspicion is that the incident trickled over to the high school." So, what happened? The charges brought to the 13 year old were the "inducing of public panic." Though deputies searched the place in hope to find the 9mm fire arm, the result was negative; yet they did seize a fire arm and the Xbox 360.
Well, I just finished writing an article on the Pope's comments on violent and sex related games where I took the liberty to make assumptions on how video games influence children nowadays, disagreeing with Pope Benedict's impressions. I feel some things should be made absolutely clear, like:
- children learn from everything they see and hear from a very small age because the young human brain is like a sponge that doesn't miss a thing; so - naturally - the kid will act in a response to the environment he/she grew up in;
- kids also have a rich imagination and if this had been the first time a child said he'd bring a gun to school everybody would have probably laughed but that's not the case; many such mishaps have been recorded and many of them have even ended up tragically;
It's no surprise that the authorities took no risk; they shut down the school and brought in the 13 year old. Tomorrow I'm bringing my shotgun to work. Ooops! Did I say that out loud?