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If you are like me, you are tired of 90-plus degree heat.

But even worse are the many stories about the hot weather. Excuse me, but isn’t it always hot in July and August?

I guess the reporters just got bored with reports on Hunter Biden, inflation and the shortage of baby formula. Therefore, this week and the next few weeks, I thought I would get you to focus on something cooler.

In the old cartoons, there were always a few shows that had a ball of snow rolling down a mountain. It always got bigger and bigger then hit a cartoon character like Wile E. Coyote. As with all cartoon characters, he would be alright and ready to continue after the roadrunner a few moments later.

REAL LIFE AND GUN POLICY

In real life, when someone gets hit, they may never get up. That is not what our young people understand. They seldom see the pain and agony from these television shows.

All of us grew up with shows that, at some point, someone was shot, but they were usually bad characters. On Gunsmoke, Marshall Dillon didn’t like violence. He tried to work things out unless the bad guys were really bad.

Times have changed since then. The snowball of the 60s evolved into more and more violence as each new television or movie has tried to outdo the older shows. More violence appears to have a greater draw on the market. Today, there are more people shot every night than anyone can keep up with. When the good guys are wounded, they are healed by the next week’s show.

This has got to have an effect on young minds. Children can not fathom the concept of death or injury when they do not see the true pain and agony of being wounded. All is well at the end of the hour – except with those young minds.

This leads us to the question of why so many young people are so very violent on our streets. If one gets cut off in traffic, some will try to run the other driver off the road. Others will pull out a gun and fire off a round. We watch as the snowball continues to grow.

When rioters believe they have a right to destroy property and raid stores because of a bad situation that occurred halfway around the country, we have a problem. The snowball continues to grow.

Law-enforcement officers are ambushed and murdered in cold blood. Young school children needlessly die because no one is willing to acknowledge that some folks need help. The snowball grows.

The value of life has been reduced to a point where some could care less about the miracle of birth. When Ralph Northam, a medical doctor who focused his career on saving children, was governor, he could not see the difference between an abortion and delivering a baby and allowing it to die. There is not a significant difference between a late term abortion and allowing a child to die, but never in the early years of the abortion debate would anyone make such a callous statement.

WHERE IS THE BRICK WALL?

In Roadrunner cartoons, the snowball would always hit an unmovable object, such as a brick wall, which would break apart the snowball. Are we nearing that brick wall?

Signs are mixed. The courts are starting to understand, but liberal legislators and prosecuting attorneys around Virginia and the country are still getting elected. There are those in Richmond, Washington and local governments that are quite willing to undermine our laws and law enforcement rather than supporting those who risk their lives to protect ours.

The actors and actresses who believe that they know what is best for us campaign to take our personal protection away from us. At the same time, they continue to appear in the movies and television shows that exploit violence. Additionally, they surround themselves with armed guards because they are more valuable than us common people.

Turning things around takes time; it does not happen overnight. But if each of us demands that all political bodies take an active role in reversing the damage done over the last generation, we can once again have a society free from fear for the safety of our families.

Frank Ruff Jr. represents Lunenburg in the state Senate. His email address is Sen.Ruff@verizon.net.