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Hold parents accountable for student behavior to prevent school shootings [Letter]

The biggest flaw of democracy is that politicians would say anything and do anything to fool the "majority." If you subscribe to the concept that smartest constituents constitute top 10 percent or so, democratically elected politicians represent the wishes of the "majority" not the wishes of their "smartest" constituents.

Take the opportunistic response of Gov. Martin O'Malley to the Connecticut school shooting. Nothing in his proposal would have prevented the Sandy Hook shooting, including limits in size of the magazines. I am not associated with NRA but can shoot 100 rounds from 10-round magazines in less than a minute! I called our state senator's office to tell him not to blindly vote for O'Malley's proposals just because you are a Democrat, but think about it. The only interest on the other side of the phone was to tally how many calls in favor and how many against the proposal, not common sense or right and wrong.

I have two grandchildren in a Howard County elementary school. Unlike O'Malley, I believe even one bullet magazine in the wrong hand is too many. I am not getting into the Second Amendment argument; it insures our liberties like no other, and the price of liberty is high. But we have to introduce legislation that would address the root cause of the problem and eliminate or at least reduce the number of these horrible incidents. The root cause of such behaviors is lack of "parental accountability." The "majority" of parents view school as a daycare service. They don't check homework, drugs, weapons or gang affiliations. The Sandy Hook mother that was the responsible person in that massacre paid with her life. To save the lives of other mothers, fathers and innocent children, let's pass a law that if any student brings weapons of any kind to school, their parents would spend a mandatory week in jail and if they kill someone, the parents would be charged with first degree murder. I guarantee that every parent would check their kids backpack before heading for school every day.

Wahid Zewari


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