Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent– The laws of rendering aid should be changed, particularly since a good number of Americans are indifferent and insensitive to the woes of individuals in dire straits or deadly situations. People today simply do not want to get involved, and they must be made responsible in some form or fashion to help others in harm’s way and laws should be passed to make it possible.

Obviously, the young men involved in the Florida filming of a drowning man should have at least called emergency officials, but they were not sensitive to the issue at hand, and they were engaging in inappropriate behavior at the time (smoking marijuana) and were fearful of arrest. So rather than give in to humanity or “the right thing to do,” they selfishly allowed the man to drown while they laughed, filmed and turned a blind eye to his predicament.

In these kind of life and death situations, particularly when no emergency call or attempt to save a person or persons has been made, there should be state laws instituted that at least require an emergency call to be made. Good faith efforts on the part of citizens should not only include calling emergency officials but acquiring help from others in the vicinity or attempting to help on their own while waiting for emergency officials to arrive.

Those who refuse to render aid or report situations like a drowning or related deadly circumstances should be faced with a fine, punishment, counseling and community service and even imprisonment or probation if they flat refuse to even make an attempt to help someone, or are themselves engaging in criminal behavior at the time.

The breakdown in society and our culture has helped to create these same types of situations that happen more often than not. Many morally reprehensible acts go unreported and when they are discovered through video tape or phone cameras and posted on social media or television stations for others to see and read about, the time to do something responsible has passed. When these kinds of insensitivities are allowed to go unnoticed or unpunished, society takes one more giant step backward to increased lawlessness and disregard for one’s fellow man.

All deadly situations need to be heavily weighed as possible crime scenes and many people who stumble into these kinds of circumstances don’t want to get involved because of preserving their own lives or pure and simple indifference and fear, but they do have a moral obligation to fellow citizens who are truly endangered or on the brink of losing their lives

Though there may be no legal duty in a number of states, there is a moral obligation. Since morals seem to only apply to those who have them, it appears that others outside the moral code of preservation of life will have to experience the “right thing to do” through some kind of legislation.

The lack of a moral foundation, which many Americans have grown up to view as normal has created a large number of people who view life as expendable and of no value. They are just a product of the culture in which they have been raised, which is void of any moral compass. Human life becomes meaningless and of no value to them.
A culture in which life is meaningless can only get worse, which means that there has to be some means of protection for those who need help in desperate situations and if laws have to be made to force people to even make a phone call to aid to their fellow man, then things are really getting bad, but if it means saving lives, rendering aid laws should be put in place where they don’t already exist.