For today's teens, its a different - and more violent - world.

I sat, clutching my pen and notebook, ready to record their answers as if I were a social scientist. They stood encircling me, this group of 17 adolescents, a curious mix of sizes and shapes, attitudes and backgrounds, bound by the preteen and teen experience.

Ten minutes before, the teens had been rehearsing for our church's upcoming Easter play, but had agreed to stay after rehearsal and answer my questions. And I had them.

I suspect that after 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson and 11-year-old Andrew Golden allegedly sprayed bullets gangland-style into a crowd of classmates at their school in Jonesboro, Ark., last week, a lot of adults had a lot of questions for the young people in their life.

My first question to the group was not an ice-breaker.

"How many of you could get access to a gun if you wanted to?" I asked.

Their hands shot up as though I had asked how many would be willing to forgo school the next day and go to the mall.

Ten of them raised their hands.

I thought they may not have understood, or maybe that I had not understood.

"I mean, how many could get a gun?" Ten hands shot up.

I persisted.

"I mean, how many would know where to get a gun or who to get a gun from?"

Ten hands shot up, and then the teens began to talk about where they would get a gun - from this person or that one.

I dug deeper.

I asked how many would consider getting a gun to protect themselves or to defend themselves if they had been threatened or had been beaten up in a fight.

Only four said yes. But still four.

I sat there looking at them, scanning their faces, looking for clues, trying to peer into their souls and read these young people, some of whom I had known since they were in elementary school.

I don't mean that I freaked out when it was obvious that they could probably get their hands on a gun more easily than I could.

Or that I was shaken to my core by the fact that four of them would consider using a gun in certain situations.

I know the times in which we live. "Mad crazy" times, as the teens would say. And in these mad crazy times, it has become harder for me to be truly shocked. Shaken, maybe.

I think what hit me the most about our conversation was the realization that teens and preteens, adolescents and even elementary school kids live in a world that I and most adults never knew and still don't really know. I mean that I have listened to them talk about their world, about their issues - but I am not sure if I ever really heard them.

But I listened to the answers that this group gave me.

They were scared, scared for themselves, scared for their neighborhoods, scared even more by the shootings in Jonesboro.

Most said they were not actually scared in school, but scared outside of school - scared of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

One girl - smart, kind, charismatic, a leader - had been beaten up and cut with a knife because she had made the mistake of being in the wrong part of town.

One boy said he was afraid for his younger brother because his younger brother's school had gotten a bomb threat. One girl said she was afraid "every day" in her neighborhood.

One young man, who said he was likely to use a gun, felt confident that he could hurt somebody worse than they could hurt him.

Their world isn't just about violence and guns. Violence and guns seem to be the ends, and not just the means to something else - the effect, not the cause.

Many of them talk about their love and sex lives with an intensity that is neither cute nor just a passing phase. Somehow, either through what they have seen firsthand or seen on television and in the movies, many young people have come to wrongly believe that they have the maturity to handle love, sexual intimacy, and relationships.

Maybe that is why the 13-year-old accused in the killings and shootings at Jonesboro is said to have sought revenge for a breakup with his girlfriend and for the girls who rejected him.

But really.

Breakup? Revenge? Murder? Thirteen years old?

What? Where is that thinking coming from?

It isn't just about a distorted perception of love. I have had conversations with teens who can't seem to comprehend fight and wrong, good and evil, responsibility, commitment, and respect. It's not that these concepts don't exist in their world. The teens just seem to have a different take on these issues.

I believe there is a tendency for adults, including many caretakers of teens and preteens, to not really pay close attention to what the kids say and do - to attribute their behavior to the perils of adolescence.

But I am not just listening to these teens anymore; ! believe I am beginning to hear them.

I realize that I have been clueless.

I don't think I'm alone.