Kids and Guns

[AutisticWunderr]

Now mind you, this is an e-mail sent to me, and I thought that it does have some good points, and it also has some points I dont believe is true to the degree that he expresses it. What do yall think of it?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Kids and Guns

Walter Williams

April 25, 2001

Every time there's a school shooting, there are demands for greater gun control measures that range from longer waiting periods and mandated gun locks to stricter licensing and restricted sales. With all the political posturing and demagoguery that follows, a hysterical public buys into the seeming plausibility that reduced availability of guns, especially to children, will reduce gun violence.

The facts of the matter are just the opposite. Yale University legal scholar John Lott demonstrates this in his book "More Guns Less Crime."

Lott's brilliant study destroys one falsehood after another about guns, but I want to focus on one of his findings -- gun accessibility and gun violence. But is gun accessibility the problem?

The fact of the matter is that gun accessibility in our country has never been as restricted as it is now. Lott reports that until the 1960s, New York City public high schools had shooting clubs. Students carried their rifles to school on the subways in the morning, then turned them over to their home-room teacher or the gym coach -- and that was mainly to keep them centrally stored and out of the way.

Students would retrieve their rifles after school for target practice.  Students regularly competed in citywide shooting contests for university scholarships. In Virginia, rural areas had a long tradition of high-school students going hunting in the morning before school, and sometimes storing their guns in the trunk of their cars during the school day, parked on the school grounds.

For most of our history, a person could walk into a hardware store, virtually anywhere in the United States, and buy a rifle. Few states even had age restrictions for buying handguns. Buying a rifle or pistol through a mail catalog, such as Sears and Roebuck, was easy. Private transfers of guns to juveniles were unrestricted. Often a 12th or 14th birthday present was a shiny new .22 caliber rifle, given to a son by his father.

These facts of our history should confront us with the question: with greater youth accessibility to guns in the past, why wasn't there the kind of violence we see with today's much more restricted access to guns? Might it be global warming? Or, might it be children playing cops 'n' robbers and cowboys 'n' Indians too much? And how do we solve today's gun violence: more gun locks, longer waiting periods, more gun laws, more psycho- babbling by school psychologists?

Maybe we should have greater school zero-tolerance policies, where bringing a water pistol, drawing a picture of a pistol or pointing a finger and shouting "bang-bang" produces a school suspension or arrest?

That kind of unadulterated nonsense will continue to produce disappointing results. We will not make inroads into the gun-violence problem until we acknowledge the underlying causes of youth behavior today, compared to yesterday. As I discussed in last week's column, we must come to the realization that laws and regulations alone cannot produce a civilized society. It's morality that is society's first line of defense against uncivilized behavior.

Moral standards of conduct have been under siege in our country for nearly half a century. Moral absolutes have been abandoned as a guiding principle. We've been taught not to be judgmental -- that one lifestyle or value is just as good as another.

More often than not, the attack on moral standards has been orchestrated by the education establishment and liberals. School shootings just might represent chickens coming home to roost where they were born.

If we refuse to seriously ask why young people weren't shooting one another at a time when guns were far more accessible than they are today, we do so at our peril.

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For the life of me, I can't understand what could have gone wrong in Littleton, Colorado. If only the parents had kept their children away from the guns, we wouldn't have had such a tragedy.

Yeah, it must have been the guns.

It couldn't have been because half of our children are being raised in broken homes.

It couldn't have been because our children get to spend an average of 30 seconds in meaningful conversation with their parents each day. After all, we give our children quality time.

It couldn't have been because we treat our children as pets and our pets as children.

It couldn't have been because we place our children in day care centers where they learn their socialization skills among their peers under the law of the jungle while employees who have no vested interest in the children look on and make sure that no blood is spilled.

It couldn't have been because we allow our children to watch, on the average, seven hours of television a day filled with the glorification of sex and violence that isn't fit for adult consumption.

It couldn't have been because we allow our children to enter into virtual worlds in which, to win the game, one must kill as many opponents as possible in the most sadistic way possible.

It couldn't have been because we have sterilized and contracepted our families down to sizes so small that the children we do have are so spoiled with material things that they come to equate the receiving of the material with love.

It couldn't have been because our children, who historically have been seen as a blessing from God, are now being viewed as either a mistake created when contraception fails or inconveniences that parents try to raise in their spare time.

It couldn't have been because we give two-year prison sentences to teenagers who kill their newborns.

It couldn't have been because our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud by teaching evolution as fact and by handing out condoms as if they were candy.

It couldn't have been because we teach our children that there are no laws of morality that transcend us, that everything is relative and that actions don't have consequences. What the heck, the president gets away with it.

Nah, it must have been the guns.

Paul Harvey, San Angelo Standard-Times

[Dorganath]

Obviously, this particular subject can be quite polarizing.  

I have no idea if Leanthar wishes this thread to continue, but I would suggest to all who participate to keep it civil, else it will be locked and/or deleted.

Just a friendly warning from someone with definite opinions but who will be staying out of this particular hornet's nest.

[AutisticWunderr]

An addendum. This was not meant to start any type of controversy or any type of argument, and I whole heartidly agree with you Dorganath. Civility is the only way to properly talk in or reply to this thread.

If this thread does start some kind of issue, I am sorry for that. But I try to post threads that make people think, use thier minds, and/or open thier eyes to things they may not know.

[ZeroVega]

 I'll give my views on this then make a suggestion to anyone that this subject intreagues...
   I think to a degree how a child develops depends on the parent(s). To a degree it depends on the environment they grow up in. (ie: 7 Homes in 15 years like me, 1 home in the city, in a trailer, or in a suburban area) I believe it depends on teachers and friends. What the watch on TV, play on the computer, or listen to on the radio. All of these are factors and I don't think any one thing can pin down why people (kids) do it.
   Personally, I'm partial to how I was raised. Having two bothers and three sisters I didn't get fifteen toys each birthday and fifty twenty dollars from each relative. My dad was in the Army. Yes Sir, No Sir, Yes Ma'am, No Ma'am. I learned respect for my elders and developed what I consider very good social skills. I'm able to converse with adults very easily while still respecting them.
   I learned the value of hard work and I've seen many people make mistakes. Several people I know have used drugs and talk about it openly. A few dropped out of school. One person brought a sawed-off shot gun to school and accidenally shot himself in the leg. One girl my family used to know a while ago is 19 and has a child. I realize that perhaps if I hadn't been raised the way I was these things may have happened to me.
   I dunno, this stuff has been going on since the beginning of time, I think we just try to solve it too much with psychology and drugs (medicine). Anti-depresent pills and councilers for the kids... easy programs like Juvinile Hall or Community Work.
   If you want something that is a bit extreem but quite interesting and in my head and heart I believe the correct way to go about it read "Star Ship Troopers." I know you guys are thinking bugs, guts, gore, and fighting. But honestly it's one of the best books I've ever read and it's about far more than that. Also considering it was written in the late 50s, it was far ahead of it's time.

[RouterBlade]

hehe im staying out of this hornets nest

[Leanthar]

This really is not a thread or a discussion we should be having on these forums.  While I am not against anybody posting their thoughts/views etc. this is one of those things (as well as politics and religion) that I just do not think our community should be discussing at the Layonara forums.
  Sorry.

[AutisticWunderr]

Not a problem Leanthar.

As stated before, I had no intention of stirring up the perverbial pot, but something in the e-mail got my mind thinking, an I just wanted to see what other people thought of it.

So, to make sure I dont post any non-suitable topics, besides the obvious, being religion and politics, what would be inappropriate?

Should I think like this: Any type of information that may, in some way, shape, form, or fashion... have a chance of offending a person, either by the thier upbringing, standings on situations, or thier living area of the world, dont post it.

Correct?

[Leanthar]

Not really, no.  It is just one of those things that is a very grey line... Not much help huh?
  Sorry, I can't really give more than that.  I want the community to be able to learn from each other and support each other.  But when flames can get ignited it tends to not help, rather annoy.  Sadly, many times we don't know that until it happens. 

[AutisticWunderr]

*nods*

I can understand whole-heartidly on that friend.

Noone knows when that burning ember will make its way into the dynamite shed, and blow it sky high.

[Thunder Pants]

yea, we tend to enjoy a friendly boards and as anyone can tell you, the 2 things anybody can have an argument over is religon and politics, so we tend to not discuss these things here so we can maintain civilty

[AutisticWunderr]

Politics wasnt the reason I made this tread TP, though it does look like it,since this thread by nature of what it contains, does have a connection to politics.

Like I was talking to Leanthar about via PM, there was in a way an alterior motive behind me posting this particular thread.

Two weeks ago my friend Leah lost her 6 year old boy, Joshua, to a pistol found beside a dumpster while he was out playing with his friends. Over the past two weeks, Ive probably spent half the time over at her house, consoling her, trying to help ease the pain as much as I can. And me getting this e-mail so soon thereafter just sent a chill down my spine. In a way, I posted this to try to get everyones opinion as to why and how children have gotten so much of an infatuation of weapons as of lately. Also, in a way, its a way for me to try to find comfort and closure to this horrible situation that I was thrown in.

This is the main reason I worked on those haks, a way for me to keep myself busy, not letting me get into a rut, as in nothing to do, so all I could do was to think about it.

So, it wasnt about politics, religion, or any other type of subject that could be touchy towards some people, it was a way for me to try to get answers and get some understanding as to why this ...... travisty of a trend is becoming so...... normal.

But who's fault was it? The person that tossed the pistol so carelessly away beside a dumpster? Or Leah, because she never owned a weapon by choice, and in her moral judgement, she made it so that her son had no way to learn how to properly use and respect a weapon? I think thats the question thats been eating at my brain the most.

[teefal]

AutisticWunderr - 7/4/2005  10:25 PM

It couldn't have been because we allow our children to enter into virtual worlds in which, to win the game, one must kill as many opponents as possible in the most sadistic way possible.

This part caught my eye, and seemed relevant.  As for the rest, the bias shows through with the evolution remarks and the pot-shot at our immoral president, which must be Clinton.  Probably an email that has been circulating for a while.

[dfiremann]

I'm surprised that big L , ZV,and Dorganath did not write a special script from preventing me from seeing this one.  However, in deference to L, I will not pipe in with an opinion, lest the polarization destroy the planet that is Layonara.  But I applaud your approach, and willingness to examine an uncomfortable topice.  good on ya, mate.