Again, the chasm between the Left and the Right on this issue is enormous. It can’t and won’t be solved until the root problem is finally admitted to, recognized, and acknowledged. But, I fear, it won’t because it really isn’t about Gun control as the Left is yammering.
Related: Chicagoland Virus “Infects” 133 – Kills 38 in the Month of February
- It is all about the culture that has changed (and the Left has much to blame itself for this).
- It isn’t about gun Crime (as it properly should be called and not gun violence).
- It is about inner self-control – something that has been disavowed by the Left in favor of External control.
They don’t believe in self-control at all – it’s almost a foreign concept to them. Instead, they’ve morphed into being the political version of Christian fundamentalists with all of its lists of external do’s and don’ts instead of inculcating internal self-limiting limits of behavior.
The best example of this was when Al Gore was campaigning for President at a Buddhist temple when I wrote this:
”no controlling legal authority”
That was the line Al Gore used back when he was campaigning against George W Bush back in 2000 in raising money at a Buddhist temple (where the monks have a vow of poverty). As I used to hear in Sunday school, and then say myself – an object lesson! By that, he just didn’t see any applicable law that applied to the situation – there was nothing there to stop him. There was no gate, if breached, that would cause a negative consequence to him. It was as if someone gave him a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card.
There was never an INTERNAL thought that “well, this is wrong” – if there is no LEGAL external law, regulation, or ordinance, then anything is ok. Life becomes a series of trying to find the “loopholes” and then exploiting them. Or, as we see now, the Left claiming that others are “exploiting” the “gun show loophole” because that how they live their lives and project that outlook onto the rest of us.
Sidenote: there is no gun show loophole. Instead, the Left is demonizing the Right to Private Property. In this case, two people happen to meet at a gun show and a sale of private property happens voluntarily. It just HAPPENS to happen during a gun show but it would be legal, certainly here in NH, for it to happen anywhere. I’ve certainly done private sales and I’m betting that most gun owners have as well. WE, internally, keep ourselves on the right side of the law in doing so. But I digress…
And this is the mentality that the Left has – that EVERYTHING must be controlled and I use “EVERYTHING” because when it comes right down to it, that’s what they want. I’m not making this up – they’ve openly said as much:
- Referencing the new law criminalizing the use of plastic straws, Councilman Jesse Dominguez said, “Unfortunately, common sense is just not common. We have to regulate every aspect of people’s lives.”
- NH State Rep Kris Roberts (D): “Government has to protect us from our own stupidity.”
- NH State Rep Leigh Webb (D): “The role of government is to legislate behavior“
- US Senator and SecState Hillary Clinton: “No. We just can’t trust the American people to make those types of choices … Government has to make those choices for people.” (Shades of GraniteGrok commenter Bruce Currie!)
SOOOO, why this long windup? I ran across this post over at American Thinker that explains well why Gun Crime (not gun violence) is such a problem. It isn’t about hunks of metal and plastic, it’s about the degradation of internal (rather than external) governance at the behest of the Left’s governance, policies, and philosophies. Here are some snippets (reformatted, emphasis mine):
When I was in high school in the early 1960s, there were no mass school shootings. The only times I remember seeing a police officer at school was once a year to give a talk about obeying the law. Only occasionally were policemen summoned to schools to deal with violent students. After the profound cultural changes our society has undergone since the 1960s, threatening behavior by troubled students is commonplace — Nikolas Cruz, who used an AR-15 to murder seventeen people at Stoneman Douglas High, was threatening teachers and other students with violence long before he did the unthinkable.
The dramatic increase in violent behavior by students is why most schools in America now have at least one full-time police officer. Some schools have more, many more. Like its counterparts in other large cities, the public school system in Detroit has its own police department, which employees hundreds of administrators, investigators, campus police officers, security personnel and a K-9 unit. Why is it necessary for so many school districts to have their own police department? The answer is a national tragedy: schools in our largest cities and counties have become dangerous places where lawless behavior by students is so prevalent that police must be close at hand. Prior to the anything goes ‘sex, drugs and rock & roll’ cultural decay that generally began in 1968, school systems that had their own police department were virtually non-existent.
…Most school shootings are carried out by severely disturbed young white males whose thought processes went haywire due to acute mental illness (bad genes, drugs) or a dysfunctional childhood (bad parenting) — or both, as was the case with Nikolas Cruz. Another reason for school shootings can be laid squarely at the feet of the corrosive cultural decline of the society in which these deranged mass murderers developed their upside down sense of right and wrong.
The anything-goes progressive culture that permeates virtually every facet our society teaches these young madmen the politically correct concept of moral relativism, the idea that moral judgments are values that can vary, depending on the viewpoints of differing cultural norms. In other words, there is no clear-cut right and wrong. If some people believe it’s O.K. to throw gay men from rooftops — an approved practice in some Muslim countries — who’s to say that’s wrong? It’s what their native culture believes. In contemporary America, troubled young minds receive mixed messages about what’s permissible and, far more important, what’s totally off limits.
In fact, there pretty are NO limits and nothing to stop you (other than what is told to be either politically correct and incorrect and that changes constantly). Religious teachings which formed morality are now seen as disgusting and bigoted (and often, immoral in themselves). Emphasis on absolute right and wrongs have been displaced by “MY TRUTH” which may or may be true or just made up on the spot on terms of self-justification.
Basically, we have moral anarchy and those of us who do hew to “old fashioned” and “out of date” senses of right and wrong, what is and isn’t moral, are snickered at as not willing to “be evolved”. Yet, we’re not the ones pulling the triggers, either.
When I was David’s age, kids had ready access to guns, but not to violent imagery. Young people of today are bombarded with gratuitously violent movies and video games that make the act of pumping bullets into human beings seem almost hip. Some studies show little connection between such viewing and mass shootings, but how can a constant stream of bloody visual carnage not have a profoundly negative impact on troubled young minds? The simulated violence that blurs the distinction between fantasy and reality is knowingly mainlined into the consciousness of today’s youth by the entertainment industry and its anything-goes progressive values.
Progressive curriculums in our schools and colleges teach budding white male mass murderers to be ashamed not only of their country, but their skin color, as well. Their already-confused minds are methodically indoctrinated with the concept of white privilege, a political narrative designed to create racial guilt and self-loathing among white people. Militant feminism further erodes the self-worth of young white males by stereotyping them with the invented malady known as toxic masculinity. Message: They’re not only white and male, God forbid, they’re also wildly cruel to women. The constant assault on their gender and skin color turns some of them into emotionally damaged young men who withdraw into isolation and anger.
Our society’s progressive-dominated culture teaches mentally troubled young white males to loathe themselves, that right and wrong are malleable concepts, and that viewing simulated images of gory violence is a cool way to have fun. No wonder some of them become mass murderers. Through its relentless indoctrination in political correctness, multiculturalism, racial politics and feminist victimization, progressivism further screws up the already screwed-up minds of future school shooters.
AND the money line:
The dramatic cultural upheaval since I was in school coincides almost perfectly with the sharp increase in self-inflicted deaths by young people: the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that in 2017 the suicide rate among young people reached its highest point since the government began collecting such statistics in 1960.
I would have also combines “self-inflicted deaths” with “mass murdering youth”. I’d also add that I believe that a lot of the drug problem in this country is due to this progressive culture that no longer encourages self-control and positive outlooks. Just look at the Democrat Prez Wannabees – look at the horrible, troubling, and dystopic world view they describe! And whom they blame for it?
If the Left truly wants to fix the problem, they have to acknowledge that there is a sub-problem underlying the current Gun Crime situation and it has nothing to do with gun ownership. It’s the culture they have created and how that is changing our young. After all:
Michelle Obama: it is about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives
Progressive Socialists have followed the Italian Socialist Gramsci on not implementing Socialism on the economic front but by changing the culture by seizing the ramparts of Culture and changing that first. Congratulations – take ownership of the whirlwind you have unleashed upon all of us.
But as we all can see – they can’t or their whole illusion of being able to fulfill their promise to create “heaven on earth” (if we would only give up EVERYTHING to let them do it) would disappear like pixie dust thrown up into the air.
