I am going to start this out with a meme, but the meme asks a question that will hopefully form the opening post of this thread. I debated whether to post this in the political forum, the faith and religion section, or the news section, but it seems to me that the problem, if there is one, has more to do with a social mindset than anything else. I add, if there is one, not to imply that gun violence is not a problem, but to acknowledge that, despite what the media and the politicians would have you believe, incidents of gun violence have gone down, not up. However, it may be true that gun violence perpetuated by children, usually against other children, has gone up. Perhaps it wasn't the case in some of the larger cities, but many of us grew up watching violence on television, including in cartoons intended for children. We had toy guns, cap pistols, and BB guns at fairly young ages, and we may have graduated to our first rifle around the time that we reached our teens, if not before. My cousins and I brought our BB guns to elementary school one time. While they were confiscated, they were returned at the end of the school day, so that we could use them on our way home through the woods trail, and no one got in trouble for it. I got in way more trouble for writing bad words on a rock behind the school. High schools had gun clubs, and even those who weren't raised with guns at home learned to use them in Boy Scouts or other youth activities. Yet, children didn't shoot up their schools and, when that did happen, it usually occurred in one of the large cities where kids weren't exposed to a lot of this stuff. What happened?
Was going to write something about the old Westerns I use to watch and that I in fact had a pump-action Daisy BB Gun when I was in high school. But, instead of writing some long, drawn out reply will simply say this...……..I totally agree with you Ken!!
Once again I will put my flame suit on. Single parent households,more precisely single mother households. Each and every day children are going without their fathers needed guidance,mostly due to the prejudicial family court system. Mothers are routinely instructed by their advisors to file restraint orders against fathers for the slightest of reasons. In no other theater is a person compelled to prove his fitness just do to his sex. In no other theater does a person walk into the room with the deck already dealt in their favor and being her game to lose. In no other court can a person just routinely deny court ordered custody and face no contempt charges. The role of fathers in our society has been reduced to that of a wallet.
I do like your comments @Peter Renfro and I do not believe you will have any need for the flame suit. With your publication I’d also like to comment that earlier in our history, kids including ourselves weren’t raised to be kids. There was a time for play and a time for work and there was no mistaking which was which. Parents and neighbors lorded over the young and taught that being young was just a preparation for the rest of our lives as responsible adults. I do not remember being treated like a child and to think about it, the kids around me weren’t either. We were taught accountability and responsibility and most of the time the circumstances of being taught were severe, sometimes too severe. But, it all took good parents, like you said Peter. Not just one but both. But alas, even if a problem with a child isn’t the single parent syndrome, we can still wonder why those with both parents are no longer being taught by them.
Could have something to do with the role models of today. This guy is a millionaire and revered by millions of fans.
I agree somewhat with @Peter Renfro on this. The breakdown of the family is responsible for many, if not most, of the societal ills. As I have written before, we certainly had more access to firearms than is possible now, but there was much less gun violence, probably because of more intact family units. I listened to an interview with a sociologist who had studied a lot of issues in societal breakdown, and he said basically the same thing. In many areas of the country, people of Oriental descent face the same issues as those of African descent, but the Asians succeed in almost everything they do, even to the point that universities try to restrict admissions to Asians while granting special privileged to Blacks. The reason, according to this person was the presence of a father in most homes and high standards set for the children. Asians and Jews expect their children to succeed, an in most cases the children work to live up to those standards. Black families, on the other hand, are usually headed by a woman with no male presence in the home and with the single mom having to work long hours just to make ends meet. That leads the children to seek the security of groups outside the family and the problems that generates. Where I think I differ from Peter is that the family breakdown among Blacks began in large part with the Great Society programs of the 1960s and the War on Poverty. I watched Black families who were intact lose the dads as the government offered privileges to fatherless families, like food stamps, Medicaid, and child care assistance. If the father was able-bodied and stayed in the family, his dependents were deprived of all that, so many left, feeling the family was better off without him, as he may only be earning a low wage. Many White families are headed down the same road. I have heard women in the ER state they were getting pregnant so they would qualify for Medicaid and food stamps/Quest.
Ken Anderson: Yet, children didn't shoot up their schools and, when that did happen, it usually occurred in one of the large cities where kids weren't exposed to a lot of this stuff. What happened? --------- I think physical aggression and physical assaults are the main reason for the shootings, most of them by teen males. Years ago, I doubt any parent would have told their child not to defend him/herself at all, under any circumstances. I think it's the most damaging thing they can tell them. The student dealing with the madness is expected to endure something indefinitely that their parents or teachers couldn't endure themselves. Eventually, they can't take another minute of the abuse. Lots of savage behavior takes place before anybody shows up with a gun, (OT) before an 8-year-old boy hangs himself or other children and teens commit suicide. Decades ago, and even now in some schools, one phone call and all of it would stop.
I think another contributing factor would be these Mega Schools. When there are 2 thousand students in a graduating class, not a single one of them has a chance to be known or recognized as an individual. It is impossible for staff to adequately monitor each students well being or lack thereof. I attended a small school, less than one hundred per class, as did my children, in a small setting the misfits were known by all and most generally got the attention they needed. I realize that in urban areas small class sizes are not as efficient financially as the mega model, but I suspect that they would be much more controllable. Another major contributor would be the "No Child Left Behind Act", this mandates that no child no matter how( damaged?) has a right to an education and for it to occur in as mainstream a setting as possible. I suspect that quite often it is such a paper,time, and spirit suck to refer a student for alternate instruction or mental counseling that many teachers do not have the will to navigate the labyrinth.
Plenty of them are damaged and have serious problems. Some of the shooters were good students, from good families, living their lives, being respectful of others. It's a social problem that won't end until the root cause is addressed, something that doesn't happen much anymore. Political agendas are more important than controlling increasing bad behavior and group aggression. In 2017, a one million dollar lawsuit was won, even after the male target who had been bullied for years, instructed by his father, knocked one of his tormentors unconscious. After the parents met with the school and the bullying continued, the father told his son he had to stand up for himself.
@Don Alaska Sad, but that mindset is one of the root causes behind much of the problem. What mindset do you mean?
The school refused to address problems even when they were brought to the attention of authorities. I don't expect school authorities to be able to solve everything, but the lack of discipline in the classroom--and between classes--leads to in-person bullying. Online harassment has to be addressed differently, but the guy in Florida who shot up the school had been a problem for several years and he was never properly addressed. Even the police/sheriff didn't perform as they were supposed to, and on cop was prosecuted for cowardice or something in the incident. We need to protect the children in our care, whether at home or in school, and in return we should expect proper behavior from those children.
My opinion is that when we starting taking God out of America then we also took out the right and wrong, and became apathetic towards good and evil. The breaking down of families with fathers "jumping ship" and mothers going off to work leaving their children to be raised by daycare and babysitters who teach them their values instead of the parents, latch key children coming home to empty houses and watching TV and playing video games that often times fill their heads with violence until they become conditioned to think violence is a natural part of life and is okay to act out on against anyone that makes you angry, etc. A Society that is teaching there is no right or wrong...and anything you believe is okay because truth is anything you want it to be. Schools teaching humanism, sexual perversion, and filling childrens' minds with everything but "reading, writing, and arithmetic" and spending more time with kids than their parents do. Even many Churches today don't seem to know what they believe anymore and they have become more entertainment centers instead of places of worship, prayer, and Bible teaching. Settle a disagreement by talking it out...not today...just pick up a gun and end the problem once and for all. That's what our children's heads are being filled with today and why so many are doing just that.
IMO, the internet and social media happened. Kids who occasionally have violent thoughts can find others who have similar thoughts, and they reinforce each other. They now belong to a group. Similar to belonging to a street gang. There is often a gang leader who encourages it, to satisfy their own sick agenda. Those thoughts become "cool" rather than something you should be ashamed of.