Rocked

Every once in awhile a story truly horrifies, doesn't it?

Have you seen the photo of the little girl from Niagara Falls who was presumed murdered by two teenagers?

It makes you not even want to pick up the paper or turn on the news.

"They should have shot those kids on the spot," someone said.

"They need to be killed immediately!!!" Someone else shouted on Facebook.

Is that the way to go with this?

I'm asking.

Because we don't seem to have much of a handle on violence in this country. When it happens in our community...it's even more difficult to handle.

Still.

"Violence begets violence," an old college professor once told me. "If we solve violence through violent means we are celebrating the very act committed by those we are trying to stop."

That really made sense to me.

When I was an idealistic kid.

But man, I was rocked yesterday by the photo of that pretty little girl.

I almost agreed with those on Facebook.

An eye for an eye. A life for a life. You kill, we kill.

You started it.

Thirty years after listening to that college professor it pains me to say that I still agree with him.

Violence isn't the answer to violence.

We really need to unclog the drain instead of bailing the water.

The problem, of course, is how do we stop it?

Can we?

The older version of that idealistic guy seems to think that we are going to just bail water forever.

And that doesn't do anything for the senseless victims of the animals running around our streets.

I'm not sure that it's even worse now than it was 30 years ago, but I know one thing for certain:

Even one of these murders really rocks me to the core.