"We Are Training Our Kids to Kill"- Dave Grossman Pgs 495-504 Agueda Gomez

     In, "We Are Training Our Kids to Kill", by Dave Grossman, the author was military man who sees how we are unconsciously teaching our children how to kill throuhgout media. Grossman says proves how the killing rate in the Unitated States has quitupled since 1975 to 2002. Two reasons why these murder cases didn't increase or get worser were due to two factors: the increased imprisonmnet of violence offenders and keeping  the media technology. Thanks to prisons, we are able to keep sex offenders, sociopaths, and robbers away from socioty. If it weren't for the advanced techniques of medicine, many war heroes would have died and many victims would have died in hospitals as well. In Grossman's essay, he describes techniques used in war to teach soldiers how to kill and describes how we are doing the same thing to our children here in the United States. The first of three processes is called desensitization. Desesitization and brutalization is what they use in bootcamps, where a soldier is verbally and physically abused the moment they stp out of the bus. This process relates to our children today because children are learning violence when the are watching violent movies and violent video games. The second process is classical conditioning where soldiers in China are taught this procedure. In this procedure, they throw two soldiers in a pit where one soldier is forced to kill the other soldier in order to survive and you have a crowd watching and cheering for the winner. In this process, the soldier is taught to like killing. This process is not used in the United States, but it is used in our children today throughout violent video games that amuse the young children. The last of the three steps kto teach a soldier how to kill is called operating conditioning. The author talks about how we are teaching our children this skill because throughout video games, children learn how to be precise shopoters and they are conditioning their shooting abilities. The author talks about a young boy who robbed a liquor store and killed the clerk, without meaning to but because he was conditioned through the video games, he learned these natural instincts.
     I thought this essay was very persuasive because the author backed up his evidence with data and information that was absolutely true. The reason I felt that this essay was persuasive is because when I was sixteen years old, my sister and I were sent to boot camp and they treated us really bad but for some strange reason we were both thinking about joining the army because of that single week we experienced boot camp. They would make us drink water until we puke, they made us work out since five in the morning all the way until it was time to go to sleep, and they would laugh among themselved when they would say mean things to us or punish us for simply smiling. I was never much of a video game player or watched much TV growing up. However, due to Grossman's evidence of young teenagers killing human beings, I do believe that violence has something to do with it because how is a young child going to have outstanding shooting although he has never picked up a gun before? Children are being taugh to kill throughout media because even animals have an instinct to not kill their own kimd.