Don't feel like being a good neighbor? Don't worry, you can just shoot anyone who complains.

<Source: The Free Lance-Star>

At the Garrison Woods apartment complex in North Stafford, VA, a 25-year-old man was shot recently for the crime of attempting to be a good neighbor.  According to reports, there were a number of young men generating a lot of noise outside of the complex, and a woman from the building asked them to quiet down.  After being verbally abused by the young men, a man visiting the woman stepped in to defend her.  After apparently trading blows with one of the noisemakers (there is no indication as to who started the physical altercation... but inductive thinking will bring the reader far here), the good neighbor was shot in the arm.  Let's review, shall we?

A number of young men (12-14) were being disruptive in a residential area.  In an ideal world, when asked to quiet down, they would elect to respect the rights of their neighbors and move their gathering elsewhere.  However, these young men decided that whatever they were doing not only was justifiable enough to wake up a residential complex, it was so important that they had the right to verbally abuse someone for daring to ask them to be quiet, and, furthermore, that they were justified in shooting someone who attempted to prevent their nonsense.

There is a lot of talk in the United States about declining moral values, etc....but it is all focused on issues such as homosexual unions and the war in Iraq.  How about we spend some time focusing on the fact that the system of personal importance with which our youths seem to be obsessed causes them to shoot people who dare disrupt their noisy, untimely fun?  This is not to say that those other issues are not important, but, rather, that there are other "under the radar" issues that are equally important to the future of this country.  The teenage and 20-something sense of entitlement is certainly one of them.