Slowman wrote:
big kahuna wrote:
If we would do something down here about addressing the crazies (not meant pejoratively when it comes to people with mental health issues) there wouldn't have been this tragedy in the first place.
3 percent of americans own 50 percent of america's guns. i think a lot of your crazies are going to be found in that cohort. it's not the ownership of a dozen semi-auto long guns with bump stocks (paddock), it's the culture that causes him to want to own them.
have you ever thought that a culture that deifies guns is what animates and energizes the crazies you want to address?
I pointed out last night that the percentage of gun ownership has greatly declined over the past 35 years but that guns are concentrated in the hands of fewer people. Ceteris parabus, it seems that it's a wash when it comes to this particular aspect.
You made my point about culture for me, though, perhaps without realizing it. (Or, in my opinion, the lack of a civilizing culture complete with the institutions that used to enforce such civilizing influences.)
What's really changed over the last last half-century, or at least since the mid-1970s? It seems to me that it's the lack of bonds and boundaries within our culture that used to act to head-off, preempt or otherwise prevent such mindless gun violence, especially when it comes to school shootings. For one, we won't address the serious failings in our mental health system, including a lack of resources targeted at the issue in the first place.
For another, we also won't tell folks what to do or how to behave when in "polite society." Parental authority -- or simply even adult authority -- is almost nonexistent, from the looks of things. When I was a boy in the 1960s and early 1970s, you listened to and obeyed the directives you were given by adults, including teachers , neighbors and so forth, or you faced clear consequences, starting with those dealt out by a father and/or mother. Which brings me to the disintegration of the so-called "nuclear family."
Adam Lanza (the Sandy Hook) shooter? Mother and no father or other adult male influence. He shot his mother first before going on his kill spree.
This shooter? Father died years ago, mother on her own. No adult male influence in the family unit. Mother died not long ago.
What's the rate of single-parent households in this country these days? Probably greater than it was in the 1960s, is my initial guess (I promise to research that further and report back any findings).
It seems to me that we as a society used to preach, and enforce, self-control rather than gun control. Do we even do so nowadays? Hard to tell, if you ask me.
So, instead of acting as stewards of a collective culture, we abrogate our responsibilities when it comes to kids and instead institute a multiplicity of gun laws an increasingly depraved citizenry -- which lacks the cultural governor switches we used to instill in each person -- won't obey. And, as I've said, short of complete and total confiscation of privately owned guns (not happening anytime in the foreseeable future, sir), what we're left with is pretty much the status quo. Lots of talk, little action and absolutely no desire to address what seems to be the true issues causing the rot that's leading to these school shootings.
"Politics is just show business for ugly people."