THE EDITOR: It is undoubtedly certain that our country’s crime rate keeps increasing at almost insurmountable heights and at greater frequencies.
It has been no secret that we have a crime epidemic in this country and that it is (if it has not as yet) getting way out of hand. With that knowledge and with the obvious disturbances that it seem to be created all around the country, one would imagine that solely anti-crime measures would be implemented by law enforcers, governments and the wider society. One would be wise to think such if all these persons were indeed likewise.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. We find that the same groups of persons whom the crimes affect, include persons who perpetuate it.
I shall expound on just one way in which this is done for the purpose of length of this letter.
As of late (at least from my knowing) there has been the sale of toy guns. Whenever I see a child playing with this toy, I am always amazed at our insensitivity and apparent absent-mindedness as adults.
Are we not supposed to be responsible? Does the responsibility not lie with the ones who ordered the items? Or the ones who let them enter the country? What about those who sell it and most of all those who purchase it for the children? Where is your responsibility? Do we not see the potential damages of these harmful toys? Does anyone not get it?
Maybe we each need to take a step back and realise that this is obviously a dangerous idea; we are teaching our young and socialising them in what is acceptable.
Children use play as a means of learning and giving them guns do just that — they learn to use them. I have seen and heard of children playing with those guns in the manner in which the real ones are used. Is that not alarming? Is it not a red flag?
I wonder if it is a rhetorical question to ask “Is it not hypocrisy that the same ones who partake in one way or another in getting these guns to these children complain about the crime?” Where do our standards lie? Do we even have any more standards as a people who claim to love our country? What about as a people who claim to love our own children?
Teaching our nation’s children to engage in crime and punish them later for learning well is indeed not love. Everyone knows that whatever you continuously feed a child, he/she will eventually learn. If we socialise them in crime, then we will indeed breed just that; criminals whilst feeding crime. Then the crime situation should no longer be blamed on the criminals but the ones who taught them. Is that not so? (Crime Fighter)