Gee, Guns Are Cool by L. M., Lynn, MA

One day when I was walking to my history class a huge gold charm around some kid's neck caught my eye. (I don't see how I could have missed it, the thing was about the size of Texas.) When I realized what the decoration depicted, I nearly fainted. Some crazy jeweler had carved this defenseless piece of gold into the shape of a semi-automatic weapon. As I passed him, I stared at the kid, and without realizing it, gave him a dirty look. The kid looked back at me and laughed as if guns were nothing but a joke. (Well, excuse me for not laughing at things that kill people.)

When I got to my class, I sat down, disgusted. The first question that I asked myself was, How can that kid be allowed to wear that in school when my friend once got in trouble for wearing cut-off jeans? I quickly realized that ornaments like these are so commonplace that no one cares any more. This idea was confirmed when I told some friends and a teacher what I had seen. They all said something to the effect of, "Relax, at least it wasn't a real gun."

What's happening here? How can people continue to extol guns and then wonder why there's so much violence in America? The fact is that if you allow people to glorify guns, you're glorifying them, too.

Now I am just as in favor of freedom of expression as anyone else, but by allowing this kid to display a piece of jewelry that advocates killing, that's just what our school administrators are doing; advocating killing.