Tuesday, January 3, 2012

The Song “Pumped Up Kicks” by the Band Foster the People Helps Bring to Light the Issue of Kids Shootings in Schools

“Pumped Up Kicks" is a song about a kid preparing to shoot his classmates at school. Part of the chorus says you’d better run, out run my gun. Pump of kick simply means expensive shoes.
It is refreshing to hear a band will write and perform music that doesn’t involve love or partying, but an unfortunate form of life in US schools.
Our take on it is not just that guns seem to be so handy to teenagers. Apparently, families leave guns and bullets around for kids to get at them. What is going on in these households? How do parents manage homes these days: No more potato chips before dinner and only two hours of T.V., but here is how you remove the safety on the pistol and can you get me the bullets in the pantry? If you take the gun out of the equation you would simply get a fight, or a stabbing at worst. But to us the real reasons behind these continual school shootings are antidepressants. The media will never talk about the effects of the antidepressants if a gun is involved. The government and media jump on the gun story, while the real ailment is psychotropic drugs. Parents seem to have little problem sanctioning a doctors prescription of antidepressants for their children.
The song “Pumped Up Kicks” has been moving up the charts all this past summer illuminating the violence that schools have become. Two decade ago the worst you got was a bruise or bloody nose, what will the next ten years bring?

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