It is no longer safe to go shopping at the mall or go to a movie or simply kiss your baby good-bye and drop them off at kindergarten. Animals are, apparently, stalking every move of a normal society looking for any opportunity to snatch the life out of the most innocent among us.

The first reaction is to cry out about gun laws as if outlawing them would help. As a lifelong gun owner, I can tell you that I have never felt the urge to burst into a school and shoot children. The problem is that our society has become weak and we don't raise men anymore. 

Why else would a generation of young men feel the need to put on a bulletproof vest and a mask and take high powered handguns and rifles into schools, malls and movie theaters in order to prove to someone in their miserable cowardly lives how powerful they really are? We have made excuses for them for too long. We have petted and medicated and raised a generation of lazy, video playing losers who, when it comes their time to become working productive members of this society, respond by striking back with unimaginable violence.

They don't have the guts to just end their own their worthless existence; they feel compelled to take innocent lives with them. While they have contributed nothing to the world, they feel justified in robbing the rest of us of our precious children and the futures they would have enjoyed. 

So what now? Obviously, we cannot predict and prepare for every insane plan conjured up that some weak twisted mind may want to perpetrate against us. But, we must take more responsibility to protect the lives of teachers and children while they are at school. 

That is not asking for much.

I call upon the county and city mayors, county and city commissions, the members of our school boards, and the members of our law enforcement communities to move quickly to examine the security measures at each of our schools and make whatever improvements necessary to insure the safety of Cleveland and Bradley County children. 

Until that can happen, I call upon Sheriff Jim Ruth and Chief of Police Wes Snyder to flood these school zones with marked patrol units. We only have a few days until Christmas breaks and it only seems reasonable that we could make that commitment until then for the peace of mind of the parents and grandparents not to mention the well being of the teachers and children required to be there.

Robert D Lawson
Former Sheriff of Bradley County