The real world is often scarier than any horror movie. American history is full of scary moments.

For example, Heaven’s Gate was a cult led by Marshall Applewhite who believed that the earth was to be cleansed and recycled and the only way to avoid being cleansed was to exit their bodies and hitch a ride on a spaceship. In 1997 they used sedatives, vodka, and plastic bags to carefully orchestrate a mass suicide, this was their way of exiting their body to avoid the end of the world. Ultimately 39 people met their demise in an unfortunate event due to believing in a cult.

Another example is Branch Davidian that was led by David Koresh and his followers believed that the apocalypse was upon them. The government was suspicious about the cult stockpiling illegal weapons and secured a search warrant to search the compound of where they were staying at. Once they arrived a gunfight erupted which left six Davidian members and four government agents dead. From there the FBI and the Davidians were in a standoff for 51 days, finally, the FBI decided to launch a tear-gas assault on April 19, 1993, when suddenly the compound caught fire. The fire killed 76 Davidian members including 20 children.

While these American cults are quite horrifying, they don’t compare to the massacre that took place in a forest of Guyana, South America on November 18, 1978. Jonestown was a remote settlement created by the Peoples Temple cult, which was led by American James Warren Jones. A crew of five working for NBC went to interview people of the cult and ask if anyone wanted to leave, once James had heard of this, he had the crew shot and killed before they could get back on their plane. Soon after he handed out Kool-Aid which had cyanide in it and poisoned 918 members of the Peoples temple including himself. Here in school, 100 students took a random survey. 84/100 said they have not heard of Jonestown.

There’s a lot of different cults in our world and many don’t have sinister intents.

“As long as (cults do) nothing bad they can do whatever they want,” Junior Mael Rodriguez said.

We should not ban something that isn’t bad in all cases because we all have our own opinions.

“No, we shouldn’t make them illegal because not all cults are bad” Senior Esteban Barrios said

People should be free to do what they want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone because we’re entitled to our own beliefs.

“Not because people want to believe what they want,” Junior Mael Rodriguez said

Since people are involved in cults for some sort of religion that doesn’t harm anything or anyone then it should only be fair to keep them around.

“Depending on the cults, if it’s just religious purposes and if they don’t cause harm then it should be allowed in our society” Psychiatrist Mr.Camacho said

We should not bother those who are doing their own thing that doesn’t affect us in any way whatsoever.

“We shouldn’t always intervene because not all of them aren’t harmful,” Junior Mael Rodriguez said