A recent newspaper headline read, "Teenage Girl Slain."

Headlines like this one aren't anything new. Such headlines have been a part of the daily news for ages. Never can a person pick up a newspaper or watch the news without reading or hearing about a person killed by another. Acts of senseless violence occur so frequently that they have become familiar and ordinary. In fact, it seems violence has become a part of everyday life.

For example, during the summer it was reported that a teenage boy shot and killed another boy for spraying bleach on his sneakers with a water gun. Another report told how, while locking up his store, a Dorchester store owner was caught in the middle of a shooting war between two rival gang members. In another incident, a Boston store owner asked a customer to leave the store because he was not wearing a shirt. The young man retaliated by fatally shooting him. One regularly hears of people, often children, who become the unintended targets of drive-by shootings. Most recently a Brockton High student was brutally stabbed and killed while walking home from the store.

How little does life mean to a person if he voluntarily murders another? People have begun to use murder as a resolution to simple problems. They forget that life is a precious gift from God, which should be treasured. Everyone is given one chance at it. How unfair it is to have someone try to play God and take that chance from another. It is as if people no longer feel. Too many people are being killed and not once do their murderers stop to think of how wrong their actions are. Why ... why does such violence exist. Why do so many people have their lives unwilling taken by those who obviously have so little regard for life. Why am I made to be afraid that the next innocent taken will be me? Why ... I don't know why ... Do you? n