Recently I was baby-sitting and while I...

Recently I was baby-sitting and while I was there, the child watched cartoons. One of the characters on the show suddenly began to shoot a gun at the “bad guys.” The child then ran off to his room and returned with a gun. He promptly began shooting at everything in the room, including me! I couldn’t believe what was happening. I do not think he knew how serious guns are because his favorite characters return perfectly fine the day after being shot. If violence has made its way into children’s cartoons, what can we expect from them? How can we expect them to grow up understanding that hurting other people is wrong when they see their favorite characters shooting guns? How will they learn that there are solutions to problems other than violence?

Juliana Kasparian, Los Angeles