Rittenhouse trial spotlights gun-violence culture — and how a mother can fail a child | Opinion
As parents, it is sometimes hard to let go of our children, grandchildren and/or great-grandchildren. We love them and nurture them and try to pass on our “good” morals to them. Training up our children in the way they should go — as the Bible tells us to do — is our job as parents and grandparents. I believe that to do otherwise, is not only detrimental to them, but also to us as parents. For God, the Great and Just One, who doesn’t play favorites, will one day judge us parents for what we failed to do in helping our children get off on the “right foot”.
Even so, our children, like us, have been given, minds of their own and a free will. They have been endowed with a sense of good and evil. Still, as they grow and their minds develop, we parents must continue to steer them in the right direction; away from “bad” trouble. Yet the harder we try, we sometimes fail, and when one of our offspring moves on in the wrong direction, we sometime wonder, “…Where did I fail…” or “Why on earth did they do that?” Truth be told we, either knowingly or unknowingly, instilled whatever wrong they have committed in their once innocent minds. We did it by the words we spoke within earshot of them, and we did it by our actions.
Children, when they are young, are like sponges. They soak up everything — the good the bad and the evil, of our words and actions. When these actions manifest in their lives, we sometime will shed tears of joy, or tears of bitterness.
Trial in Wisconsin
I was reminded of the importance of our actions as witnessed by our children when I watched the news about young Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial. He is accused of shooting three men, killing two of them and wounding the third, during a protest against police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year.
Rittenhouse has argued that he fired in self-defense after the men attacked him. If I remember correctly, one news story said Kyle, then only 17, was dropped off at the demonstration by his mother, who drove the armed teenager to Kenosha from their hometown of Antioch, Illinois, 23 miles away. What was she thinking? I don’t know. But it seems to me that any rational-thinking parent should have known that she was putting her child in imminent danger; that her child could kill someone or be killed himself.
As it turned out, Kyle killed two people. Another was seriously injured. Kyle said he acted in self-defense. I don’t know. I doubt that we will ever know. All I know is that a mother took her 17-year-old son, who was armed, to a dangerous demonstration.
Was it Kyle’s ulterior motive to kill someone? Did he think he could take the law into his own hands? I hate to go Black here, but I don’t think a young Black man could have moved so freely through the mob of people, in front of arms-bearing police officers without being stopped or even arrested. Yet, Kyle did. And he was cheered on. Kyle is a young man with a mind of his own. He did what he wanted to do, and now he has the blood of two other human beings on his hands.
A pervasive gun culture in the U.S.
I don’t profess to understand the gun culture that is so influential in our country today. Guns have become somewhat of a god to some people, who carry their weapons proudly in gun holsters in plain sight. Non-gun-toting people like me don’t understand why this is a part of our culture now. I have heard the saying, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” Well, my friends, it’s the people with guns who are about the business of using their guns to kill other people in large numbers.
According to the Gun Violence Archives, gun violence in 2021 has been on the rise. In the first six months of this year, gunfire killed 351 people in the U.S., up from 214 in the first half of 2020. More recently, during the Halloween weekend alone, there were at least 11 mass shootings in the U.S. It was people who were pulling the triggers of the guns that killed those people. This is a sad commentary.
As I write this column, Kyle’s trial is still going on. Right now, it seems as though he will walk out of the courthouse a free man, because even Judge Bruce Schroeder, who is overseeing the trial, seems to be on his side. Kyle, the gun-toting young man who came to town that day to save the city from demonstrators, broke down and cried on the stand. He is charged with reckless homicide, intentional homicide and attempted intentional homicide. On the stand Kyle was so emotional that he could hardly speak, and at one point, the judge called for a recess. When he could speak, Kyle said he did nothing wrong.
In the galley, Kyle’s mother shed bitter tears.
Self-help book shares pearls of inherited wisdom
Kudos to my dear friend Retha Boone-Fye, who recently published her first book, “That Doesn’t Smell Sense: Ancestral Pearls of Wisdom — Part One.” Flipping through her book, reading the nuggets that she wrote about, my mind traveled back to my childhood and young adult days.
I chuckled to myself when I read the chapters, “You Can Pick Your Friends…But you Can’t Pick Your Family,” “A Shut Mouth Catch No Flies,” “A Bird in Hand is Worth Two in the Bush,” “People Will Know You by the Company You Keep,” and one of my favorites, “God Don’t Like Ugly.” This one isn’t talking about one’s physical looks. Rather, it speaks about the beauty of being a decent person.
I am much older than Retha, but as I read over the sayings that I grew up with, I could almost hear my mom’s, or my grandma’s voice speaking to me, trying to prepare me to face the world. These were sayings that were passed down from their mothers and grandmothers. They called them “Mother’s wit.”’ And they still work today.
The book cost $16.99 and can be purchase on Amazon.
Bea L Hines can be reached at bea.hines@gmail.comBea L Hines can be reached at bea.hines@gmail.com
