But if I really wanted to solve the problem, I’d look at the type of parenting that child was getting. Guns aren’t the cause of the problem; they’re a symptom. It’s society that is misusing the guns, and we have to work at it from both ends: fix society and restrict access to guns at the same time.
The fact is, you could take every gun away from every private citizen in the USA, and it wouldn’t solve the problem. Oh, don’t get me wrong. If you got rid of the guns, you’d cut down on a lot of the killing. But you’d still have the basic problem with American society.
What is the Real Problem?
Well, I’m sorry to have to say this out loud, because it’s going to hurt a few feelings, but you all know this fact and you don’t want to say it. My American friends, the problem with your society (and we have it in Canada, too) is that your population contains a huge number of nasty, frightened, violent people. Worse than that, you have a glitch in your moral programming that says that it’s a good thing for them to be that way.
Childhood Discipline
We’re talking about a society (And this is still prevalent in Canada as well) where people believe that beating your children will turn them into model citizens. That’s right. Every time you post or share that “I was spanked and I’m just fine” meme on social media, you do your little part to make the violence worse. The child who will become the 2036 mass murderer at your local school is getting regular spankings right now.
The Military
A society that creates soldiers by destroying their individuality (Basic training involves a drill sergeant screaming at them constantly, week after week) and replacing it with an unnatural blindness to the wrongness of killing. Then, after they’re used up, dumping them on the street without fixing them.
Competition
A society where the desire to win at all costs is far more important than the enjoyment of a sport well played. An economic system that operates so poorly that the only way a company can survive the bad luck years is to make obscene profits when they have a lucky streak. Which means that some lucky or smart people make obscene profits constantly.
Tradition
And, as a police chief of a large American city was discussing on the news the other night, there are a lot of people who still buy into the self-fulfilling myth that modern society is identical to what they see in Western movies. Picture the damage that actors like Clint Eastwood and Charlton Heston have done by bringing their movie themes into the political arena, where many voters cannot distinguish the actor from the roles he played.
The Bottom Line
Should we try to control guns? Of course, we should try. But not because the guns are wrong. It’s the people who are wrong, and we need to restrict those individuals’ ability to access dangerous weapons.
We should keep trying, but we will keep failing until we have persuaded a big enough majority of the population that this institutionalized violence is wrong. At that time, we will start getting rid of the guns because we realize that it’s the right thing to do.
But by that time, society will have stopped being so violent, and we will probably have stopped having school shootings anyway.