I sat down on the couch on a Friday night and began channel surfing to find something to watch when I came across a new show called “Hannibal”. I saw less than 30 seconds and was disgusted. Why do they keep making these types of shows? Hannibal, CSI, Revenge (doesn’t the name say it all?), etc. These types of shows make me wonder if we are giving the bad guys new ideas. Why in the world would we want to do that?

I work at a childcare and preschool and I have been told there is a toddler who use a play knife from the housekeeping area and pretends to stab other toddlers with it. I have seen children pretending to shoot guns. I’ve had a school ager tell me he wants to stab his teacher and I’ve seen children hitting stuffed animal toys. Yes, it is just a stuffed animal, but children are role playing when they play with toys. These particular children were playing veterinarian, so why did they want to hit the stuffed animal? Would if it was a real animal? Their pet at home?

As an animal lover, I have read facts based on studies that many adults who abuse or even have killed someone start their violent
tendencies first by harming animals then later move onto harming humans. It is said that these facts are not given the proper attention they should. If they did, maybe these people with violent tendencies would be helped early on and not continue on with their violence. Here are some links that will take you to some of these fact based articles.
Animal Legal Defense Fund
People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals
People Helping Animals
Huffington Post

Are people born violent? Is it the environment they grow up in? Is it seeing tv shows like Hannibal, movies, or video games that teach them this? Desensitize them? To people and animals. These are important things to think about and pay attention too.

Even if you don’t love animals, pay attention anyway, because
animal abuse will eventually lead to human violence.

When will we learn?