By Doug Dobmeyer

During the past five-year period, 1997-2001, 122 school children and adults have been shot on grade or high school campuses. Twenty-one of those people have died.

The shootings range across the country in thirteen states, many with weak gun restriction laws. Louisiana, Florida, Arkansas (twice), Michigan, Oklahoma, Georgia, California, Colorado, Oregon, Tennessee, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Mississippi share this distinction of hosting school killings.

The most recent shootings took place the week of March 3 in California and Pennsylvania. In the most serious, a 15-year-old kid took a .22 pistol and shot 15 high school students and two adults in a suburban San Diego school, killing two. Adult authorities scratched their heads, gave pro-forma comments of distress to the media and prosecutors quickly said the kid would be tried as an adult, as if that will make any difference. Pictures in the papers designed to show adult response showed SWAT teams poking their guns in windows while two cops inside the school arrested the kid.

This will continue to occur again and again. There are two distinct reasons why these tragedies will keep popping up. The first is a lack of gun control laws for an America of the 21st century. The National Rifle Association types have successfully pushed an agenda of "the Founding Fathers wanted Americans to have guns."

Well, there are now estimated to be 250 million handguns and long guns (rifles and shotguns) in the hands of Americans. That averages out to be a gun for every man, woman and child in this country.

In California, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Violence Prevention Center, 71.5 percent of youth homicides were committed with a firearm. This is slightly higher than all homicides in that state, which had 69.5 percent being committed with firearms. This may be splitting hairs, but the only reason the percentages of guns being involved in California's homicides are so high is simply because of availability. If you reduce the number of guns, you reduce the deaths.

Secondly, there is a terrible disconnect between America's children and the adults who purport to run our society. My own teenage children tell me that adults don't have a clue about what's going on with kids. But adults love to tell kids what to do, and they are at least partially right.

Kids today face an inordinate amount of pressure. They are often viewed negatively by adults and they see the world as terribly confusing. For instance, what is the proper outlet for the anger we all feel from time to time?

Seventeen children went to the extreme and pulled the trigger that wounded and/or took lives, while also setting in motion further alienation in society around deep-seated cultural issues.

I fear that some adult American leaders say this is the cost of a free and liberal society. The trouble is, most of that rhetoric comes from died-in-the-wool conservatives who are interested because of politics or possibly economic investments in continuing a wild-west culture.

If you watch enough TV and movies, it's not hard to come to the conclusion that violence is an option worthy of consideration. Movies, even comedies such as Men in Black, rely on violence to carry much of the airtime. But it's violence without consequences. When a person is blown away, the movie doesn't reveal the family anguish, the pain of recovery or the therapy sessions for the witnesses to brutal violence. It's hard for a kid to understand that the reality of life is the pain from the action, not the thrill of the violent action that movies treat so lightly.

Steve Young, the father of a son shot to death and Midwest director of the Million Mom March, said, "If you can change the culture, you can change how the problem of handguns is addressed."

Young's fight is a tough one. The culture that needs to be changed touts gun ownership as a desirable commodity as it perpetuates the threat and reality of violence. The culture that is intricately tied to making profits through the manufacture, importing and sales of guns doesn't seem interested in changing.

The culture that adores movies and TV shows that slowly numb people to accepting violence and makes money for investors in the process is difficult to change. The culture that idolizes failed adults as leaders while failing to listen to children is a barrier to change. The chance to make money in this day and age may be too great to overcome.

Young will not give up, though. And neither can you, if you believe there is something better than the slipshod way our society is run today.

The Million Mom March is holding events in cities across the U.S. on Mothers Day, May 13. You can contact the group at (312) 879-7920 or their website at www.millionmommarch.org.

Doug Dobmeyer is the Amnesty International media representative in the Midwest.