School Shootings - The Growing Problem

This post will not spend time moaning over what happened in Newtown CT today so much as trying to get a handle on why these "multiple random shootings" are growing in America.

A lot of folks, unfortunately, will ignore the real source of the problem and will concentrate on screaming for tighter controls on guns. But history - and statistics - prove that gun controls only make the problem worse. The highest rates for gun crimes in America are in the cities with the most stringent gun controls - Chicago and Washington D.C.

But if gun control is not the real answer, what is? To get the answer to that question we must look again to history and statistics. Here are two things that must be given serious consideration:

1) The vast majority of these shooters are between the ages of 15 and 25. Almost none have been over 40. This is important as you will soon discover.

2) With one exception (University of Texas, 1966) all the "school shootings" in American history occured since 1997 - just 15 years ago. Columbine happened in 1999.

By understanding those two facts, you have to ask - what changed in America that would explain this phenomenon?

By using the ages of the shooters and the dates of the shootings, you start to see a pattern of sorts - the shooters were born and raised between 1980 and 1992, They were raised in the environment of the end of the 20th Century. So, what was different?

One thing history teaches us is that America took a sudden and huge shift to the left with the inception of the "Warren Court" in the '60's and '70's. Prior to that, the vast majority of young people were raised with a firm belief in the sanctity of life - life was precious. Young people were raised to believe in God, and respect life and property. But when the Warren Court kicked God out of the schools and public square, and then made abortion legal, suddenly our society was placing much less reverence on life. A child who sees adults callously aborting babies soon understands that human life has little value. And without a fear of God, the child grows up to believe the taking of a life is not that big a deal.

Enter video games. Those kids quickly learn how much fun and excitement there is in killing everything on the screen. He also learns that if the game player "dies", he can simply restart the game. There is no lasting penalty.

And then the social networks - our kids no longer have to get PERSONALLY involved in human relationships. Most of their "connections" are online. There is little or no emotional attachment to people you never really meet face-to-face.

When you add the three, you begin to see that every one of these shooters was raised in an environment that is conducive to random murder. No fear of God, no sancity of life, no respect for life and property, and no emotional connections that tend to tie people together.

If mom could abort me, my life has no value. If there is no God, there is no real hope. And if there are no emotional, personal connections, you have a hollow individual with little or no conscience.

If we, as a society want to quell the rising tide of these tragedies, the answer is not the control of guns - it is the control of the conscience. To quiet this terrible beast we must bring back, and instill in our children by our own choices and actions, the sense that life is precious.

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